“My words are unerring tools of
destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Gansey had once told Adam that he was afraid most people didn't know how to handle Ronan. What he meant by this was that he was worried that one day someone would fall on Ronan and cut themselves.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Is this thing safe?"
"Safe as life," Gansey replied.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“We have to be back in three hours," Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she'll need it again."
"This," Gansey replied "is precisely why I didn't want to have a baby with you.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“You are being self-pitying."
"I'm nearly done. You don't have much more of this to bear."
"I like you better this way."
"Crushed and broken," Gansey said. "Just the way women like 'em.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Ronan said, "I'm always straight."
Adam replied "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“I guess I make things that need energy stronger. I'm like a walking battery."
"You're the table everyone wants at Starbucks," Gansey mused as he began to walk again.
Blue blinked. "What?"
Over his shoulder, Gansey said, "Next to the wall plug.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Fate," Blue replied, glowering at her mother, "is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear.
Ronan finished with, “For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.”
Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“You missed World Hist."
"Did you get notes for me?"
"No. I thought you were dead in a ditch.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“I guess now would be a good time to tell you," He said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Gansey's partying with his mother," Ronan said. He smelled like beer. "And Noah's fucking dead. But Parrish is here.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“How do you feel about helicopters?"
There was a long pause. "How do you mean? Ethically?"
"As a mode of transportation."
"Faster than camels, but less sustainable.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“He strode over to the ruined church. This, Blue had discovered, was how Gansey got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“In his head, his mother said, 'People shout when they don’t have the vocabulary to whisper'.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Blue tried not to look at Gansey's boat shoes; she felt better about him as a person if she pretended he wasn't wearing them.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Adam had once told Gansey, "Rags to riches isn't a story anyone wants to hear until after it's done.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“I think they're here because I thought they ought to be here," Gansey said.
Blue replied sarcastically. "Okay, God.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“When she opened her eyes, she was both in her body and watching it, nowhere near the cavity of the tree. The Blue that was before her stood inches from a boy in an Aglionby sweater. There was a slight stoop to his posture, and his shoulders were spattered darkly with rain. It was his fingers that Blue felt on her face. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
Tears coursed down the other Blue's face. Though some strange magic, Blue could feel them on her face as well. She could feel, too, sick, rising misery she'd felt in the churchyard, the grief that felt bigger than her. The other Blue's tears seemed endless. One drop slid after another, each following an identical path down her cheeks.
The boy in the Aglionby sweater leaned his forehead against Blue's. She felt the pressure of his skin against hers, and suddenly she could smell mint.
It'll be okay. Gansey told the other Blue. She could tell that he was afraid. It'll be okay.
Impossibly, Blue realized that this other Blue was crying because she loved Gansey. And that the reason Gansey touched her like that, his fingers so careful with her, was because he knew that her kiss could kill him. She could feel how badly the other Blue wanted to kiss him, even as she dreaded it. Though she couldn't understand why, her real, present day memories in the tree cavity were clouded with other false memories of their lips nearly touching, a life this other Blue had already lived.
Okay, I'm ready- Gansey's voice caught, just a little. Blue, kiss me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.
This was the important thing.
It had always been the important thing.
This was what it was to be Adam.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Are you really going to work in that?" Maura asked.
Blue looked at her clothing. It involved a few thin layering shirts, including one she had altered using a method called shredding. "What's wrong with it?"
Maura shrugged. "Nothing. I always wanted an eccentric daughter. I just never realised how well my evil plans were working.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Don't panic. Are you sitting? You probably don't need to sit. Well, possibly. At least lean on something.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“I found it."
"People find pennies," Gansey replied. "Or car keys. Or four-leaf clovers."
"And ravens," Ronan said. "You're just jealous 'cause" - at this point, he had to stop to regroup his beer-sluggish thoughts - "you didn't find one, too.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
“Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater
Born place: in The United States
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“Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don’t follow her at all.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Grace Reed: the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every wake.”
― Huntley Fitzpatrick, quote from The Boy Most Likely To
“what love looks like
what does love look like the therapist asks
one week after the breakup
and i’m not sure how to answer her question
except for the fact that i thought love
looked so much like you
that’s when it hit me
and i realized how naive i had been
to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person
as if anybody on this entire earth
could encompass all love represented
as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for
would look like a five foot eleven
medium-sized brown-skinned guy
who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast
what does love look like the therapist asks again
this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence
and at this point i’m about to get up
and walk right out the door
except i paid too much money for this hour
so instead i take a piercing look at her
the way you look at someone
when you’re about to hand it to them
lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation
eyes digging deeply into theirs
searching for all the weak spots
they have hidden somewhere
hair being tucked behind the ears
as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation
on the philosophies or rather disappointments
of what love looks like
well i tell her
i don’t think love is him anymore
if love was him
he would be here wouldn’t he
if he was the one for me
wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me
if love was him it would have been simple
i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat
i think love never was
i think i just wanted something
was ready to give myself to something
i believed was bigger than myself
and when i saw someone
who probably fit the part
i made it very much my intention
to make him my counterpart
and i lost myself to him
he took and he took
wrapped me in the word special
until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me
hands only to feel me
a body only to be with me
oh how he emptied me
how does that make you feel
interrupts the therapist
well i said
it kind of makes me feel like shit
maybe we’re looking at it wrong
we think it’s something to search for out there
something meant to crash into us
on our way out of an elevator
or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere
appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore
looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual
but i think love starts here
everything else is just desire and projection
of all our wants needs and fantasies
but those externalities could never work out
if we didn’t turn inward and learn
how to love ourselves in order to love other people
love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power
to make sure we don’t
love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing who to choose”
― Rupi Kaur, quote from The Sun and Her Flowers
“Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
“A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment—it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children’s knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something—a new life?—yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say “Namas-te!” “Good morning!” How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice—“Namas-te!”—a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, “I salute you”.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from The Snow Leopard
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