Scheming Quotes

“Is that—?" asked Wylan.

"Scheming face?" said Jesper.

Matthias nodded. "Definitely.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“He surveyed what remained of his crew. Rotty still hovered by the wreckage of the longboat. Jesper sat with elbows on knees, head in hands, Wylan beside him wearing the face of a near-stranger; Matthias stood gazing across the water in the direction of Hellgate like a stone sentinel. If Kaz was their leader, then Inej had been their lodestone, pulling them together when they seemed most likely to drift apart.

Nina had disguised Kaz’s crow-and-cup tattoo before they’d entered the Ice Court, but he hadn’t let her near the R on his bicep. Now he touched his gloved fingers to where the sleeve of his coat covered that mark. Without meaning to, he’d let Kaz Rietveld return. He didn’t know if it had begun with Inej’s injury or that hideous ride in the prison wagon, but somehow he’d let it happen and it had cost him dearly.

That didn’t mean he was going to let himself be bested by some thieving merch.

Kaz looked south toward Ketterdam’s harbors. The beginnings of an idea scratched at the back of his skull, an itch, the barest inkling. It wasn’t a plan, but it might be the start of one. He could see the shape it would take—impossible, absurd, and requiring a serious chunk of cash.

“Scheming face,” murmured Jesper.

“Definitely,” agreed Wylan.

Matthias folded his arms. “Digging in your bag of tricks, demjin?”

Kaz flexed his fingers in his gloves. How did you survive the Barrel? When they took everything from you, you found a way to make something from nothing.

“I’m going to invent a new trick,” Kaz said. “One Van Eck will never forget.” He turned to the others. If he could have gone after Inej alone, he would have, but not even he could pull that off. “I’ll need the right crew.”

Wylan got to his feet. “For the Wraith.”

Jesper followed, still not meeting Kaz’s eyes. “For Inej,” he said quietly.

Matthias gave a single sharp nod.

Inej had wanted Kaz to become someone else, a better person, a gentler thief. But that boy had no place here. That boy ended up starving in an alley. He ended up dead. That boy couldn’t get her back.

I’m going to get my money, Kaz vowed. And I’m going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he’d promised her so long ago.

Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“It's amazing how fearless you can be when you want something bad enough, the lengths to which you'll go, the grit you'll put into the scheming and maneuvering. That's determination for you. I would have made a good bounty hunter.”
― Anne Clendening, Bent: How Yoga Saved My Ass

“I am apt to think she was too artful to rail at me, but rather pretended to have a kindness for me, and like Iago gave, as she saw occasion, wounds in the dark.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“It was you! You were the secret buyer!"

"Finally," muttered Kaz.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“They were so absorbed in their plotting that they did not hear Boule de Suif return. But the Comte's whispered 'shh!' made them all look up. There she was. A sudden silence fell, and at first a feeling of embarrassment prevented them from speaking to her. At last, however, the Comtesse, more of an adept than the rest in social duplicity, asked her: 'Did you enjoy the christening?”
― Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories

“The shrewd marry for money, the scheming marry for status, the calculating marry for power, but the wise marry for love.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“With the characteristic cunning of true love, she was already manipulating the future.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

“I think that my fear of being sacrificial is based on the assumption that I will give away far more than I could ever hope to get back. And while that assumption is blatantly wrong, maybe the greatest thing that I’m doing wrong is that I’m walking around with an assumption.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Opportunists prosper in the atmosphere of crisis, although fittingly even they are sometimes undone by their own scheming,”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare

“You're scheming,' the Ghost says, noticing my gaze.
...
'I'm always scheming,' I return.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Dream It, Believe In It, And Achieve It.”
― Black Barbie, Schemin' On The Low

“Playing fair is for people who don’t mind playing to lose.' —Kevin Price”
― Seanan McGuire, Half-Off Ragnarok

“You may be a fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty girl, but I like you.”
― GLEN NESBITT, SUS: Short Unpredictable Stories