“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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“É mais duro ver outro sofrer do que suportarmos nós o sofrimento.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Mercy
“Perched upon the stones of a bridge
The soldiers had the eyes of ravens
Their weapons hung black as talons
Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder
To the shock of iron-heeled sticks
I drew closer in the cripple’s bitter patience
And before them I finally tottered
Grasping to capture my elusive breath
With the cockerel and swift of their knowing
They watched and waited for me
‘I have come,’ said I, ‘from this road’s birth,
I have come,’ said I, ‘seeking the best in us.’
The sergeant among them had red in his beard
Glistening wet as he showed his teeth
‘There are few roads on this earth,’ said he,
‘that will lead you to the best in us, old one.’
‘But you have seen all the tracks of men,’ said I
‘And where the mothers and children have fled
Before your advance. Is there naught among them
That you might set an old man upon?’
The surgeon among this rook had bones
Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs
‘Old one,’ said she, ‘I have dwelt
In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs,
And slid like a serpent between muscles,
Swum the currents of slowing blood,
And all these roads lead into the darkness
Where the broken will at last rest.
‘Dare say I,’ she went on,‘there is no
Place waiting inside where you might find
In slithering exploration of mysteries
All that you so boldly call the best in us.’
And then the man with shovel and pick,
Who could raise fort and berm in a day
Timbered of thought and measured in all things
Set the gauge of his eyes upon the sun
And said, ‘Look not in temples proud,
Or in the palaces of the rich highborn,
We have razed each in turn in our time
To melt gold from icon and shrine
And of all the treasures weeping in fire
There was naught but the smile of greed
And the thick power of possession.
Know then this: all roads before you
From the beginning of the ages past
And those now upon us, yield no clue
To the secret equations you seek,
For each was built of bone and blood
And the backs of the slave did bow
To the laboured sentence of a life
In chains of dire need and little worth.
All that we build one day echoes hollow.’
‘Where then, good soldiers, will I
Ever find all that is best in us?
If not in flesh or in temple bound
Or wretched road of cobbled stone?’
‘Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant,
‘This blood would cease its fatal flow,
And my surgeon could seal wounds with a touch,
All labours will ease before temple and road,
Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant,
‘Crows might starve in our company
And our talons we would cast in bogs
For the gods to fight over as they will.
But we have not found in all our years
The best in us, until this very day.’
‘How so?’ asked I, so lost now on the road,
And said he, ‘Upon this bridge we sat
Since the dawn’s bleak arrival,
Our perch of despond so weary and worn,
And you we watched, at first a speck
Upon the strife-painted horizon
So tortured in your tread as to soak our faces
In the wonder of your will, yet on you came
Upon two sticks so bowed in weight
Seeking, say you, the best in us
And now we have seen in your gift
The best in us, and were treasures at hand
We would set them humbly before you,
A man without feet who walked a road.’
Now, soldiers with kind words are rare
Enough, and I welcomed their regard
As I moved among them, ’cross the bridge
And onward to the long road beyond
I travel seeking the best in us
And one day it shall rise before me
To bless this journey of mine, and this road
I began upon long ago shall now end
Where waits for all the best in us.
―Avas Didion Flicker
Where Ravens Perch”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Crippled God
“8But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”
― quote from Holy Bible: The New King James Version
“A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red
“Most folks here got rules 'bout trespassing. Warning shot's fired right close to the head. Get they's attention. Next shot gets a lot more personal. Now I'm too old to waste time firing a warning shot.....”
― David Baldacci, quote from Wish You Well
Rubaiyat of Omar Kha...
White Hot Kiss
Rosemary's Baby
Tara Road
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