“What if I mess up?"
"Oh, you will. You'll mess up, you'll make mistakes, you'll break things. Some you'll be able to piece together, and others you'll lose. That's all a given. But there's only one thing you have to do for me."
"What's that?"
"Stay alive long enough to mess up again.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Lying is easy. But it's lonely."
"What do you mean?"
"When you lie to everyone about everything, what's left? What's true?"
"Nothing," I say.
"Exactly.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“It takes at least three assassination attempts to scare me off. And even then, if there are baked goods involved, I might come back.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“I’ve been thinking.”
“A dangerous pursuit.”
“Indeed.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“You're trying to block out every bit of noise. But people are made of noise, Mac. The world is full of noise. And finding quiet isn't about pushing everything out. It's just about pulling yourself in.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Because the only way to truly record a person is not in words, not in still frames, but in bone and skin and memory.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Free caffeine and sugar, a recipe for making friends.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Everything is valuable, in its own way. Everything is full of history.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“He fought the men and he slayed the monsters and he bested the gods, and at last the hero, having conquered all, earned the thing that he wanted most. To go home.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“I am a horrible hollow kind of tired; all I want is quiet and rest.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“You know,” he says, “for someone who doesn’t like touching people, you keep finding ways to put your hands on me.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“It becomes a game, whispered and breathless.
"I hide who I am."
"I fight with the dead."
"I lie to the living."
"I am alone.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“The silliest things shatter you. A T-shirt discovered behind the washing machine. A toy that rolled under a cabinet in the garage, forgotten until someone drops something and goes to fetch it, and suddenly they’re on the concrete floor sobbing into a dusty baseball mitt.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“And then I get why Wes can’t stop smiling, even though it looks silly with his eyeliner and jet-black hair and hard jaw and scars. I am not alone. The words dance in my mind and in his eyes and against our rings and our keys, and now I smile too.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“We protect the past. And the way I see it, that means we need to understand it.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“He manages a sad smile. “An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It’s a manipulation.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“What do schools do that for?” he grumbles. “What’s the point of summer if they give you homework?”
“Exactly!”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“We make a good team, Mackenzie Bishop.”
“We do.” We do, and that is the thing that tempers the heat beneath my skin, checks the flutter of girlish nerves. This is Wesley. My friend. My partner. Maybe one day my Crew. The fear of losing that keeps me in check.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Things only hurt more when you can see them.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“What a mess. Truths are messy and lies are messy, and I don’t care what Da said, it’s impossible to cut a person into pielike pieces, neat and tidy.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“Everything about Wesley Ayers is messy. My three worlds are kept apart by walls and doors and locks, and yet here he is, tracking the Archive into my life like mud. I know what Da would say, I know, I know, I know. But the strange new overlap is scary and messy and welcome. I can be careful.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“More of a cookie person, myself. No offense to the other baked goods. I just like cookies.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“A death is traumatic. Vivid enough to mark any surface, to burn in like light on photo paper.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“The Archive makes us monsters. And then it breaks the ones who get too strong, and buries the ones who know too much.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“But once you know, you can’t go back. Not really. You can carve out someone’s memories, but they won’t be who they were before. They’ll just be full of holes. Given the choice, I’d rather learn to live with what I know.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
“I am still frozen when he reaches out and brushes a finger over the three lines etched into the surface of my ring, then twists one of his own rings to reveal a cleaner but identical set of lines. The Archive’s insignia. When I don’t react—because no fluid lie came to me and now it’s too late—he closes the gap between us, close enough that I can almost hear the bass again, radiating off his skin. His thumb hooks under the cord around my throat and guides my key out from under my shirt. It glints in the twilight. Then he fetches the key from around his own neck.
“There,” he says cheerfully. “Now we’re on the same page.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Archived
Victoria Schwab
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“I’m never wearing them," Ron was saying stubbornly. "Never."
"Fine," snapped Mrs. Weasley. "Go naked. And, Harry, make sure you get a picture of him. Goodness knows I could do with a laugh.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Metamorphosis
“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, quote from The Name of the Wind
“A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.”
― Umberto Eco, quote from The Name of the Rose
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, quote from The Scarlet Letter
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