Quotes from The Dream Thieves

Maggie Stiefvater ·  439 pages

Rating: (98.2K votes)


“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them.
Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness.
Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“I am being perfectly fucking civil.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,' he said. 'Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.' He flailed an arm toward the stars.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves



“If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one.
Ronan wasn't a fan of lamps.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.

Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey first met him.

"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"

"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.

Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?"

Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"

Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves



“Silence was never a wrong answer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“So what you're saying is you can't explain it."
"I did explain it."
"No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“You really didn't see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn't it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“He hadn't realized yet that Gansey could persuade even the sun to pause and give him the time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves



“It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“There were many versions of Gansey, but this one had been rare since the introduction of Adam's taming presence. It was also Ronan's favorite. It was the opposite of Gansey's most public face, which was pure control enclosed in a paper-thin wrapper of academia. But this version of Gansey was Gansey the boy. This was the Gansey who bought the Camaro, the Gansey who asked Ronan to teach him to fight, the Gansey who contained every wild spark so that it wouldn't show up in other versions. Was it the shield beneath the lake that had unleashed it? Orla's orange bikini? The bashed-up remains of his rebuilt Henrietta and the fake IDs they'd returned to? Ronan didn't really care. All that mattered was that something had struck the match, and Gansey was burning.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.
He was in a terrible mood.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“Reality's what other people dream for you.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“Boys like him didn't die; they got bronzed and installed outside public libraries.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves



“Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.
In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“When Ronan thought of Gansey, he thought of moving into Monmouth Manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of Gansey asking the Gray Man for his life. Brothers.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“Calla readjusted, wrapping the silk around her other thigh instead. "Which one's he again? The pretty one?"
Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Blue's look said, I'm so, so sorry. Gansey's said, Am I the pretty one?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves



“Arbores loqui latine. The trees speak Latin.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“I know you think you're a punk," Declan said. "But you aren't nearly as bad ass as you think you are."
"Oh, go to hell," Ronan snapped, just as the alter boys broached the rear doors.
"Guys," Matthew pleaded. "Be holy.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


“Flustered, she replied, "You're not my - my - grandmother, or something."

"You'd talk about this with your grandmother? I can't possibly imagine discussing my dating life with mine. She's a lovely woman, I suppose. If you like them bald and racist.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Dream Thieves


About the author

Maggie Stiefvater
Born place: in The United States
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