Vira > Vira's Quotes

“I missed you every hour. And you know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. I'd catch myself just walking around to find you, not for any reason, just out of habit, because I'd seen something that I wanted to tell you about or because I wanted to hear your voice. And then I'd realize that you weren't there anymore, and every time, every single time, it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I've risked my life for you. I've walked half the length of Ravka for you, and I'd do it again and again and again just to be with you, just to starve with you and freeze with you and hear you complain about hard cheese every day. So don't tell me why we don't belong together," he said fiercely.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“I don't care if you danced naked on the roof of the Little Palace with him. I love you, Alina, even the part of you that loved him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“Why don't Fjerdans let girls fight?"

"They don't want to fight."

"How do you know? Have you ever asked one?"

"Fjerdan women are to be venerated, protected."

"That's probably a wise policy."

"It is?"

"Think how embarrassing it would be for you when you got trounced by a Fjerdan girl.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Kaz leaned back. "What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?"
"Knife to the throat?" asked Inej.
"Gun to the back?" said Jesper.
"Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina.
"You're all horrible," said Matthias.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. “Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”
Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”
“My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“I'm a business man," he'd told her. "No more, no less."
"You're a thief, Kaz."
"Isn't that what I just said?”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“In this moment he was just a boy -brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."

Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.

Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“Mornings like this one were made for memories.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“They crashed into each other as if propelled by gravity, and he didn't know which one of them was the object and which the earth, only that they were colliding. The kiss was Lila pressed into a single gesture. Her brazen pride and her stubborn resolve, her recklessness and her daring and her hunger for freedom. It was all those things, and it took Kell's breath away.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“My father was a vulture. My mother was a magpie. My oldest brother is a crow. My sister, a sparrow. I have never really been a bird."
Lila resisted the urge to say he might have been a peacock. It didn't seem the time.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“Please tell me this is easier to take off than it was to put on.”
Calla raised a brow. “You do not think Master Kell knows how?”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“Because Rhy didn’t need his protection, not anymore, and he’d only told a partial truth when he said they both needed this.
The whole truth was, Rhy needed it more.
Because Kell had given him a gift he did not want, could never repay.
He’d always envied his brother ’s strength.
And now, in a horrible way, it was his.
He was immortal.
And he hated it.
And he hated that he hated it. Hated that he’d become the thing he never wanted to be, a burden to his brother, a source of pain and suffering, a prison. Hated that if he’d had a choice, he would have said no. Hated that he was grateful he hadn’t had a choice, because he wanted to live, even if he didn’t deserve to.
But most of all, Rhy hated the way his living changed how Kell lived, the way his brother moved through life as if it were suddenly fragile. The black stone, and whatever lived inside it, and for a time in Kell, had changed his brother, woken something restless, something reckless. Rhy wanted to shout, to shake Kell and tell him not to shy away from danger on his account, but charge toward it, even if it meant getting hurt.
Because Rhy deserved that pain.
He could see his brother suffocating beneath the weight of it. Of him.
And he hated it.
And this gesture—this foolish, mad, dangerous gesture—was the best he could do.
The most he could do.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasn’t time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin had been born in the year of the god of death, and he was finally glad of it. He surrendered himself to his god, who smiled and came close. Stories will get you killed, he murmured in Arin’s ear. Now, you just listen. Listen to me.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“I told you everything I know", said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling anxiety verging on panic at the thought of not finding the man there, of having to track him down, of time lost…but the man had opened the outermost door almost immediately after Arin’s pounding knock.
"I didn’t ask you the right questions,“ Arin said. "I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached trough the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”
“Yes”
“And you couldn’t really see her.”
“That’s right.”
“But you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t see her?”
“Because she spoke in Herrani.”
“Perfectly.”
“Yes.”
“No accent.”
“No.”
“Describe the hand.”
“I’m not sure…”
“Start with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”
“Yes, like a house slave’s.”
Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”
“The wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”
“Did you see the sleeve of a dress?”
“Maybe. Blue?”
Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”
“I don’t know. Things happened too fast.”
“Please. This is important.”
“I don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true.”
“All right, all right. Was this her right hand or her left?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me anything about it? Did she wear a seal ring?”
“Not that I saw, but –”
“Yes?"
"She had a birthmark. On the hand, near the thumb. It looked like a little black star.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him.
A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason.
She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“He felt like that: like a dark, curling force was working through him. It flooded to the tips of his fingers and warmed him. It spread his ribs wide with each breath.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“You don't need to be gifted with a blade. You are your own best weapon.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“He changed us both." She seemed to struggle for words. "I think of you, all that you lost, who you were, what you were forced to be, and might have been, and I—I have become this, this person, unable to—"

She shut her mouth.

"Kestrel," he said softly, "I love this person.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“Arin remmembered seeing her hand in Javelin’s mane, curling into the coarse strands. This made him remember the almost freakish lenghth between her littlest finger and thumb as her hand spanned piano keys. The black star of the birth-mark. He saw her again in the imperial palace. Her music room. He’d seen that room only once. About a month ago, right before Firstsummer. Her blue sleeves were fastened at the wrist.
Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason. She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“She remembered her letter confessing every thing to Arin. I am the Moth. I am your country’s spy, she’d written. I have wanted to tell you this for so long. She’d scrawled the emperor’s secret plans. It didn’t matter that this was treason. It didn’t matter that she was supposed to marry the emperor’s son on First-summer’s day, or that her father was the emperor’s most trusted friend. Kestrel ignored that she’d been born Valorian. She’d written what she felt. I love you. I miss you. I would do anything for you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“But honesty requires courage. As she cornered the thief in his lair, she found that she wasn’t so sure of herself. She was sure of only one thing. It made her fall back a little. She lifted her chin.
Her heart had an unsteady rhythm they both could hear when she told the thief that he might keep what he had stolen.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“Every chip of her being slid into place, into the image of a lost world. The boy discovering it. The girl who sees it spark and flare, and understands, now, what she feels. She realizes that she has felt this for a long time.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“Later, Kestrel wished she had spoken then, that no time had been lost. She wished that she’d had the courage that very moment to tell Arin what she’d finally known to be true: that she loved him with the whole of her heart.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“How do I look in the dark?”
Startled, Arin glanced at him. The question had had no edges. It wasn’t sleek, either. Its soft, uncertain shape suggested that Roshar truly wanted to know. In the fired red shadows, his limbs looked lax and his mutilated face met Arin’s squarely. The heavy feeling that Arin carried—that specific sadness, nestled just below his collar bone, like a pendant—lessened. He said, “Like my friend.”
Roshar didn’t smile. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression, which was rare for him. Rarer still: his tone. Quiet and true. “You do, too.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“I have a confession,” he said. “Sometimes I offend on purpose. It’s like my smile.”
“That’s not an apology.”
“Princes don’t apologize.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“She pressed her face into the pillow. His scent was there. She was stupid to have come, yet didn’t have the strength to leave.
The ghost of him between the sheets. The shadow of her old self curled into the shadow of him.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss