Quotes by Maggie Stiefvater

Fuck the past. This was the present.

The inside of the old Camaro smelled like asphalt and desire, gasoline and dreams.

Adam was in the dream, too; he traced the tangled pattern of ink with his finger. He said, Scio quid hoc est. As he traced it further and further down on the bare skin of Ronans back, Ronan himself disappeared entirely, and the tattoo got smaller and smaller. It was a Celtic knot the size of a wafer, and then Adam, who had become Kavinsky, said Scio quid estis vos. He put the tattoo in his mouth and swallowed it.Ronan woke with a start, ashamed and euphoric.The euphoria wore off long before the shame did.He was never sleeping again.

Gansey had once told Adam that he was afraid most people didnt 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.

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldnt forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish.

As the sun shines low and red across the water, I wade into the ocean. The water is still high and brown and murky with the memory of the storm, so if there’s something below it, I won’t know it. But that’s part of this, the not knowing. The surrender to the possibilities beneath the surface. It wasn’t the ocean that killed my father, in the end. The water is so cold that my feet go numb almost at once. I stretch my arms out to either side of me and close my eyes. I listen to the sound of water hitting water. The raucous cries of the terns and the guillemots in the rocks of the shore, the piercing, hoarse questions of the gulls above me. I smell seaweed and fish and the dusky scent of the nesting birds onshore. Salt coats my lips, crusts my eyelashes. I feel the cold press against my body. The sand shifts and sucks out from under my feet in the tide. I’m perfectly still. The sun is red behind my eyelids. The ocean will not shift me and the cold will not take me.

As I pulled aside the linen curtain to the back room, I heard the front door open again. If it was Christina returning to make a second effort at my leggings, I was going to be forced to get loud, and I didnt like getting loud.But it wasnt Christina I heard at the front of the store.Instead, a very familiar voice said, No, no, Im looking for something very particular. Oh, wait, I just saw it.I turned around.Cole St. Clair smiled lazily at me.I gave so many damns at once that it actually hurt.

Somewhere close bye, a man is moaning; hes been trampled or thrown or bitten. He sounds resentful or surprised. Did no one tell him that pain lives in this sand, dug in and watered with our blood?

There were many versions of Gansey, but this one had been rare since the introduction of Adams taming presence. It was also Ronans favorite. It was the opposite of Ganseys 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 wouldnt show up in other versions. Was it the shield beneath the lake that had unleashed it? Orlas orange bikini? The bashed-up remains of his rebuilt Henrietta and the fake IDs theyd returned to? Ronan didnt really care. All that mattered was that something had struck the match, and Gansey was burning.

His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didnt 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.

(Malory, unhopeful: I dont suppose you have any tea? Jesse: DO YOU WANT EARL GREY OR DARJEELING? Malory: Oh, sweet heavens!)

In her small voice, Persephone said, I have nothing to add. After a moment of consideration, she added, however, If you are going to punch someone, dont put your thumb inside your fist. It would be a shame to break it.

So heres my theory, and this is such crap science, I dont have to tell you. Its science without microscopes, blood tests, or reality.

Some people envied Ronan’s money. Adam envied his time. To be as rich as Ronan was to be able to go to school and do nothing else, to have luxurious swathes of time in which to study and write papers and sleep. Adam wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all Gansey, but he was tired. He was tired of squeezing homework in between his part-time jobs, of squeezing in sleep, squeezing in the hunt for Glendower. The jobs felt like so much wasted time: In five years, no one would care if he’d worked at a trailer factory. They’d only care if he’d graduated from Aglionby with perfect grades, or if he’d found Glendower, or if he was still alive. And Ronan didn’t have to worry about any of that.

You know what I mean. Im telling you I was stupid over it. I thought it was about trying so hard to survive that you didnt have the time to be a good parent. Obviously, thats not it. Because you and I, were both...wealthy in love.

...she made her home in between the pages of books.

This is a love story. I never knew there were so many kinds of love or that love could make people do so many different things.I never knew there were so many different ways to say goodbye.

This is sams phone there was a long,heavy pause, and then: oh. Another pause. Youre the girl, arent you? The girl who was in my house? I tried to think of what i might gain by denying it and drew a blank yes do you have a name?do you?he gave a short laugh that was completely without humor but not unpleasent. I think i might like you. Im Beck.

My wolf was a cute guy and he was holding my hand. I could die happy.

I knew he wouldnt come, but I howled anyway, and when I did, the other wolves would pass images of him to me of what he looked like: lithe, gray, yellow-eyed. I would pass back images of my own, of a wolf on the edge of the woods, silent and cautious, watching me. The images, clear as the slender-leaved trees in front of me, made finding him seem urgent, but I didnt know how to begin to look.