Ira > Ira's Quotes

“ Tamquam, said Ronan, and Adam said, Alter idem.
Cicero had written the phrase about Atticus, his dearest friend. Qui est tamquam alter idem. Like a second self.
Ronan and Adam couldn’t hug, because they had no real arms, but it didn’t matter. Their energy darted and mingled and circled, the brilliant bright of the sweetmetals and the absolute dark of the Lace. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to. Audible words were redundant when their thoughts were tangled together as one. Without any clumsiness of language, they shared their euphoria and their lurking fears. They rehashed what they had done to each other and apologized. They showed everything they had done and that had been done to them in the time since they’d last seen each other—the good and the bad, the horrid and the wonderful. Everything had felt so murky for so long, but when they were like this, all that was left was clarity. Again and again they spiraled around and through one another, not Ronan-and-Adam but rather one entity that held both of them. They were happy and sad, angry and forgiven, they were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan said, "I'm always straight."
Adam replied "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, 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, 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, The Raven Boys

“You missed World Hist."
"Did you get notes for me?"
"No. I thought you were dead in a ditch.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, 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, 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, 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, The Raven Boys

“tamquam alter idem”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Adam.
Ronan missed him like a lung.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: Please.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“I want it too much," Adam said. That sentence, Ronan thought, was enough to undo all bad feeling he might have had meeting Adam's Harvard friends, all bad feeling about looking like a loser, all bad feeling about feeling stuck, all bad feeling, ever. Adam Parrish wanted him, and he wanted Adam Parrish.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“This was as Ronan remembered it. Adam's ribs fit against his ribs just as they had before. His arms wrapped around Adam's narrow frame the same way they had before. His hand still pressed against the back of Ronan's skull the way it always did when they hugged. His voice was missing his accent, but now it sounded properly like him as he murmured into Ronan's skin: "You smell like home.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Tamquam,’ said Adam.
'Wait,’ said Ronan.
'Tamquam,’ he said again, gently.
'Alter idem,’ Ronan said, and found himself alone.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“I got access to some of the agencies’ documents,’ Adam said casually. This, Declan thought, was why those kids in the waffle line couldn’t truly be Adam’s bosom friends. Adam was reading intelligence documents about his boyfriend and they were googling celebrity chefs.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Was Adam injured, was he bored with Ronan, did he prefer the company of his urbane new friends, calm down, Ronan, stop being needy, Ronan, get yourself together, Ronan, you're always the car crash, Ronan.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Adam seemed to only think about the future. He thought about what he wanted to happen days or weeks or years down the road, and then he backfilled actions to make it happen. He was good at depriving himself in the now in order to have something better in the later.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Neither Ronan nor Adam had been trained in the difficult and nuanced art of having a future. They had only ever learned the art of surviving the past.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“He’d dreamt that watch for Adam when he left for Harvard. It was the closest he could come to a love letter; the language of affection had never felt right to Ronan. Clumsy. Overblown. False. Ronan speaking the language of another country, vocabulary learned from watching films on YouTube. But the watch—the watch told the time for whatever time zone Ronan was in, and it said exactly what Ronan meant to say.
Think of where I am, it said. Think of me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“And finally, after nearly everyone had gone to bed, Ronan and Adam lay on their backs on one of the roofs and watched the stars get brighter. Without taking his eyes off the sky, Ronan reached out his hand to Adam to offer him something. It was a ring. Without taking his eyes off the sky, Adam put it on.
They sighed. The stars moved overhead. The world felt enormous, both past and future, with their slender present hovering in the middle.
It was all very good.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan and his friend Gansey stood on the back porch, leaning on the railing, watching the psychics giggling as they placed the flowers for the ceremony. Every so often, Ronan threw a cheese cube stolen from a snack tray at Chainsaw, whose claw marks scarred the railing.
“You want one of these?” Gansey asked. He gestured with his chin to indicate it. The all of it. The wedding.
“Yeah,” said Ronan. “I think so.”
“Well that’s a relief,” Gansey said.
“How do you figure?”
“I asked Adam and he said the same thing.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“That night, Ronan didn’t dream.
After Gansey and Blue had left the Barns, he leaned against one of the front porch pillars and looked out at his fireflies winking in the chilly darkness. He was so raw and electric that it was hard to believe that he was awake. Normally it took sleep to strip him to this naked energy. But this was not a dream. This was his life, his home, his night.
After a few moments, he heard the door ease open behind him and Adam joined him. Silently they looked over the dancing lights in the fields. It was not difficult to see that Adam was working intensely with his own thoughts. Words kept rising up inside Ronan and bursting before they ever escaped. He felt he’d already asked the question; he couldn’t also give the answer.
Three deer appeared at the tree line, just at the edge of the porch light’s reach. One of them was the beautiful pale buck, his antlers like branches or roots. He watched them, and they watched him, and then Ronan could not stand it. “Adam?”
When Adam kissed him, it was every mile per hour Ronan had ever gone over the speed limit. It was every window-down, goose-bumps-on-skin, teeth-chattering-cold night drive. It was Adam’s ribs under Ronan’s hands and Adam’s mouth on his mouth, again and again and again. It was stubble on lips and Ronan having to stop, to get his breath, to restart his heart. They were both hungry animals, but Adam had been starving for longer.
Inside, they pretended they would dream, but they did not. They sprawled on the living room sofa and Adam studied the tattoo that covered Ronan’s back: all the sharp edges that hooked wondrously and fearfully into each other.
“Unguibus et rostro,” Adam said.
Ronan put Adam’s fingers to his mouth.
He was never sleeping again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King