“Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and smooth and on their own. Right now they take pieces of me with them.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Magda looks at me as if I've gone mad. Or I've grown up. It's kind of the same thing.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“The wind took hold of whatever I felt, and ran away with it.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“I feel connected to you, and I couldn't bear the thought of that being severed. Lost.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Everything seems different at night. Defined. Beyond the window, the world is full of shadows, all pressed together in harsh relief, somehow sharper than they ever were in daylight.
Sounds seem sharper,too, at night. A whistle. A crack. A child's whisper.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“You really are like him, your father."
"I can't tell whether you think that's good or bad."
"What does it matter? It's simply true.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Properly buried."
"Properly kept."
"That is the way with witches."
"And with all things.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“I can see him juggling the words inside his head. Fumbling. I tried to juggle once, with three apples I'd found in the pantry. But I just ended up bruising them all so badly my mother had to make apple bread. The whole time I was trying, I kept getting lost in the movements. I couldn't concentrate on all of them at once.
I wish Cole would give me an apple. And then he looks at me, and there's that same sad, almost smile, like he's decided to pass me one, but he knows I can't juggle either. Like there's no reason for both of us to bruise things any more than needed.
I hold out my hand. "Let me help.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Well," I ask, leaning over him, "do you wish to stay?"
"I do."
"And why is that, Cole?" I say, tipping toward him so that our noses nearly brush.
"Well," he says with a smile, "the weather's quite nice.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Her bare feet land with light thuds like rain on stones.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Fear is a strange thing,” he used to say. “It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away. Nothing good grows out of fear.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Funny how when we start to tell a secret, we can’t stop. Something falls open in us, and the sheer momentum of letting go pushes us on.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone. “The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Cole steps forward, his fingers reaching around my shoulders, and kisses me.
It is sudden and smooth and soft as air against my lips. The wind whips around us, tugging at the fabric of our clothes, but not pulling us apart.
And then it's gone, the cool pressure against my lips, and my eyes are open and looking into two gray eyes like river rocks.
"/That's/ what you wanted to show me?"
"No," he says, his fingers slipping down my arms as he leads me off the path and out, away from Near. "That was just in case.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“The morning is a stealthy hunter, my father used to say. It sneaks up quiet and quick on the night and overtakes it.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“All Near knows.” “All Near forgets.” “Or tries.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“No, dearie. I don’t need any seeds. And besides, I’m growing moor flowers. Wildflowers.” “I didn’t know you could, in this soil.” “You can’t, of course. That’s the point. Flowers are freethinking things. They grow where they please. I’d like to see you try and tell a moor flower where to grow.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“When I was small, the wind sang me lullabies. Lilting, humming, high-pitched things, filling the space around me so that even when all seemed quiet, it wasn’t. This is a wind I have lived with.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“My father taught me how to track, how to read the ground and the trees. He taught me that everything has a language, that if you knew the language, you could make the world talk. The grass and the dirt hold secrets, he’d say. The wind and the water carry stories and warnings.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“The trees all whisper, leaves gossiping. The stones are heavy thinkers, the sullen silent types. He used to make up stories for everything in nature, giving it all voices, lives. If the moor wind ever sings, you mustn’t listen, not with all of your ears. Use only the edges. Listen the way you’d look out the corners of your eyes. The wind is lonely, love, and always looking for company.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“It is as if the moon and the trees have switched places. The sky is plunged into the heavy cloud-lidded darkness that seems to come every night, but in the valley below, the trees—or the places between the trees, it is impossible to tell the source—are fully lit, glowing. The woods are alight like an ember, bluish white and cradled by the rolling hills. It’s like a beacon, I think with a chill. So this is what happens when the world goes black. The forest steals the light from the sky. Cole straightens beside me, taking ragged breaths. I cannot stop staring at the glowing trees. It is strange and magical. Almost lovely. The wind song has become simply a song, clear and articulate, as if made by an instrument instead of the air. It is all a perfect dream.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“Being a stranger is not a crime.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
“sheets, I keep hearing something—or someone—calling, just loud enough to pierce the walls. The voice is surely something more than wind, curling and twisting itself into highs and lows, like muffled music. I know that if only I could lean closer, words would become clear, distinct. Words that wouldn’t break apart before I can wrap my mind around them.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from The Near Witch
Victoria Schwab
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“some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Annotated Shakespeare: The Comedies, Histories, Sonnets and Other Poems, Tragedies and Romances Complete (Three Volume Set in Slipcase)
“You know, I keep having this really weird feeling that you’re going to take me someplace later and tie me up so that your friends can come laugh at me. (Channon)
Does that happen to you often? (Sebastian)
No, never, but this night has the makings for a Twilight Zone episode. (Channon)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Dragonswan
“My boyfriend recently asked me to marry him. I said yes. He’s the sweetest, kindest man I’ve ever known. Problem is, the diamond he gave me was smaller than I hoped for. I don’t really want to hurt his feelings. I need to know a polite way to express my disappointment. –Lori, Manhattan God has the same dilemma when it comes to you, sweetheart. P.S. When your fiancé dumps your selfish ass, give him my number. Answering”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Stuck-Up Suit
“Sweet little thing says she still wants to marry him. Breaks your heart: She sighed and sounded sincere, so Tracy nodded in a way she hoped denoted that she, too, was a little bit heartbroken — even though she thought that if her (hypothetical) boyfriend were in a coma for more than a few weeks, she’d probably just cut her losses and move on, not stick around to watch him shit in his pants for the next fifty years.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political exposé slam its covers shut right now.
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
Socrates taught us: Know thyself!
Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II
Blood Song
Once Burned
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