“I mean, most people want to escape. Get out of their heads. Out of their lives. Stories are the easiest way to do that.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“The beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he only felt human after doing something monstrous.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Monsters, monsters, big and small,
"They're gonna come and eat you all.
Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw,
Shadow and bone will eat you raw.
Malchai, Malchai, sharp and sly,
Smile and bite and drink you dry.
Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal,
Sing you a song and steal your soul.
Monsters, monsters, big and small,
They're gonna come and eat you all!”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn't matter if you're monster or human. Living hurts.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“He wasn't made of flesh and bone, or starlight.
He was made of darkness.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“She cracked a smile. "So what's your poison?"
He sighed dramatically, and let the truth tumble off his tongue. "Life."
"Ah," she said ruefully. "That'll kill you.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“We are the darkest acts made light.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Nobody gets to stay the same.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“He could be the monster if it kept others human.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Why did everyone have to ruin the quiet by asking questions? The truth was a disastrous thing.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“People are users. It’s a universal truth. Use them, or they’ll use you.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“I read somewhere," said Kate, "that people are made of stardust."
He dragged his eyes from the sky. "Really?"
"Maybe that's what you're made of. Just like us."
And despite everything, August smiled.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“But the teacher had been right about one thing: violence breeds.
Someone pulls a trigger, sets off a bomb, drives a bus full of tourists off a bridge, and what's left in the wake isn't just she'll casings, wreckage, bodies. There's something else. Something bad. An aftermath. A recoil. A reaction to all that anger and pain and death.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
In with gunfire and out with smoke.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“It hurts,” he whispered.
“What does?” asked Kate.
“Being. Not being. Giving in. Holding out. No matter what I do, it hurts.” Kate tipped her head back against the tub. “That’s life, August,” she said. “You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re monster or human. Living hurts.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Sing you a song and steal your soul.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Even if surviving wasn't simple, or easy, or fair.
Even if he could never be human.
He wanted the chance to matter.
He wanted to live.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“I'd rather be able to see the truth than live a lie.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“It was a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Whatever he was made of — stardust or ash or life or death — would be gone.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
In with gunfire and out with smoke.
And August wasn’t ready to die.
Even if surviving wasn’t simple, or easy, or fair.
Even if he could never be human.
He wanted the chance to matter.
He wanted to live.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” she said, shimmying along the edge.
“Not heights,” he murmured. “Just falling.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Why are there so many shadows in the world, Kate? Shouldn’t there be just as much light?”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“There are no monsters in the dark.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“Listen to me,” he said, pulling off his coat. “You need to stay awake.”
She almost laughed, a shallow chuckle cut short by pain.
He tore the lining from the Colton jacket. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re a really shitty monster, August Flynn.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“He shrugged, and for a second they stood there, sizing each other up, the moment stretching, the gaze growing uncomfortable until his gray eyes finally broke free, escaping to the ground. Kate smiled, victorious. She gestured to the patch of pavement, the border of grass. “What brings you to my office?”
He looked around, confused, as if he’d actually intruded. Then he looked up and said, “The view.”
Kate flashed a crooked grin. “Oh really?”
His face went red. “I didn’t mean you,” he said quickly. “I was talking about the trees.”
“Wow,” she said dryly. “Thanks. How am I supposed to compete with pine and oak?”
“I don’t know,” said Freddie, cocking his head. Stray dog again. “They’re pretty great.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“I am Sunai,” he said. “I am holy fire. And if I have to burn the world to cleanse it, so help me, I will.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“The witching hour, people used to call it, that dark time when restless spirits reached for freedom.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“There would be a time to call the music. Time to summon the souls.”
― Victoria Schwab, quote from This Savage Song
“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being.”
― Atul Gawande, quote from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
“I devoted myself to the house, to the children, to Pietro. Not once did I think of having Clelia back or of replacing her with someone else. Again, I took on everything, and certainly I did it to put myself in a stupor. But it happened without effort, without bitterness, as if I had suddenly discovered that this was the right way of spending one's life, and a part of me whispered: Enough of those silly notions in your head.”
― quote from Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
“While these tactics were aggressive and crude, they confirmed that our legislation had touched a nerve. I wasn’t the only one who recognized this. Many other victims of human rights abuses in Russia saw the same thing. After the bill was introduced they came to Washington or wrote letters to the Magnitsky Act’s cosponsors with the same basic message: “You have found the Achilles’ heel of the Putin regime.” Then, one by one, they would ask, “Can you add the people who killed my brother to the Magnitsky Act?” “Can you add the people who tortured my mother?” “How about the people who kidnapped my husband?” And on and on. The senators quickly realized that they’d stumbled onto something much bigger than one horrific case. They had inadvertently discovered a new method for fighting human rights abuses in authoritarian regimes in the twenty-first century: targeted visa sanctions and asset freezes. After a dozen or so of these visits and letters, Senator Cardin and his cosponsors conferred and decided to expand the law, adding sixty-five words to the Magnitsky Act. Those new words said that in addition to sanctioning Sergei’s tormentors, the Magnitsky Act would sanction all other gross human rights abusers in Russia. With those extra sixty-five words, my personal fight for justice had become everyone’s fight. The revised bill was officially introduced on May 19, 2011, less than a month after we posted the Olga Stepanova YouTube video. Following its introduction, a small army of Russian activists descended on Capitol Hill, pushing for the bill’s passage. They pressed every senator who would talk to them to sign on. There was Garry Kasparov, the famous chess grand master and human rights activist; there was Alexei Navalny, the most popular Russian opposition leader; and there was Evgenia Chirikova, a well-known Russian environmental activist. I didn’t have to recruit any of these people. They just showed up by themselves. This uncoordinated initiative worked beautifully. The number of Senate cosponsors grew quickly, with three or four new senators signing on every month. It was an easy sell. There wasn’t a pro-Russian-torture-and-murder lobby in Washington to oppose it. No senator, whether the most liberal Democrat or the most conservative Republican, would lose a single vote for banning Russian torturers and murderers from coming to America. The Magnitsky Act was gathering so much momentum that it appeared it might be unstoppable. From the day that Kyle Scott at the State Department stonewalled me, I knew that the administration was dead set against this, but now they were in a tough spot. If they openly opposed the law, it would look as if they were siding with the Russians. However, if they publicly supported it, it would threaten Obama’s “reset” with Russia. They needed to come up with some other solution. On July 20, 2011, the State Department showed its cards. They sent a memo to the Senate entitled “Administration Comments on S.1039 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law.” Though not meant to be made public, within a day it was leaked.”
― Bill Browder, quote from Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
“Today it is busy and decked with finery. It is packed to purpose with poisons and poisoners. If a house could smile, Greavesdrake would be grinning.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from Three Dark Crowns
“Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed”
― quote from Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
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