Victoria Schwab Quotes

“Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Lying is easy. But it's lonely."
"What do you mean?"
"When you lie to everyone about everything, what's left? What's true?"
"Nothing," I say.
"Exactly.”

— Victoria Schwab

All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.

— Victoria Schwab

“Because you don't think I'm a bad person," he said. "And I don't want to prove you wrong.”

— Victoria Schwab

“His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Aren't you afraid of dying?" he asked Lila now.
She looked at him as if it were a strange question. And then she shook her head. "Death comes for everyone," she said simply. "I'm not afraid of dying. But I am afraid of dying here." She swept her hand over the room, the tavern, the city. "I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Be lost. Give up. Give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.”

— Victoria Schwab

Everything is valuable, in its own way. Everything is full of history.

— Victoria Schwab

You can't be two people. You end up being neither.

— Victoria Schwab

“It's okay to not be okay," she says. "When you've been through things-whatever those things are-and you don't allow yourself to not be okay, then you only make it worse. Our problems will tear us apart if we try to ignore them. They demand attention because they need it.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.”

— Victoria Schwab

You know," he says, "for someone who doesn't like touching people, you keep finding ways to put your hands on me.

— Victoria Schwab

It becomes a game, whispered and breathless.
"I hide who I am."
"I fight with the dead."
"I lie to the living."
"I am alone.

— Victoria Schwab

“Victor was naturally quiet, but even more so under pressure, which gave his peers the distinct impression he knew what he was doing, even when he didn't.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Like everything was real, but nothing mattered.”

— Victoria Schwab

“I don't want to be forgotten.”

— Victoria Schwab

“What a mess. Truths are messy and lies are messy, and I don't care what Da said, it's impossible to cut a person into pielike pieces, neat and tidy.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Things only hurt more when you can see them.”

— Victoria Schwab

The beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them.

— Victoria Schwab

“He wasn't made of flesh and bone, or starlight.
He was made of darkness.”

— Victoria Schwab

He leans in, resting his weathered hand on the bed. Treat all the bad things like dreams, Kenzie. That way, no matter how scary or dark they get, you just have to survive until you wake up.

— Victoria Schwab

“Anger flared through him, but anger was unproductive so he twisted it into pragmatism while he searched for a flaw.”

— Victoria Schwab

Magda looks at me as if I've gone mad. Or I've grown up. It's kind of the same thing.

— Victoria Schwab

“Pretty thing," whispered an old woman from a doorway in Maktahm. "Pretty skin. Pretty bones."
"This way, Master," called another.
"Come inside."
"Rest your feet."
"Rest your bones."
"Pretty bones."
"Pretty blood."
"Drink your magic."
"Eat your life."
"Come inside.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Scary, how easy it is to forget bad things.”

— Victoria Schwab

“He came to me, after you were gone. Master Kell."
Lila's eyes widened. "What for?"
"To pay the debt for your clothes."
Her mood darkened. "I can pay my own debts," she snapped, "and Kell knows it."
Calla smiled. "That is what I told him. And he went away. But a week later, he came back, and made the same offer. He comes every week."
"Bastard," mumbled Lila, but the merchant shook her head.
"Don't you see?" said Calla. "He wasn't coming to pay your debt. He was coming to see if you'd returned to pay it yourself.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Truth be told, Victor didn't care for graveyards, either. He didn't like dead people, mostly because he had no effect on them. Sydney, conversely, didn't like dead people because she had such a marked effect on them.”

— Victoria Schwab

“It's not that Mom didn't keep anything, it's that she kept the wrong things. We leave memories on objects we love and cherish, things we use and wear down.”

— Victoria Schwab

“What are you supposed to be?" she asked in Arnesian. "A fish?"
Alucard made a noise of mock affront. "Obviously," he said, brandishing the helmet, "I'm a dragon."
"Wouldn't it make more sense for you to be a fish?" challenged Lila. "After all, you do live on the sea, and you are rather slippery, and-"
"I'm a dragon," he interjected. "You're just not being very imaginative.”

— Victoria Schwab

“We are the darkest acts made light.”

— Victoria Schwab

“M. That's what I call her, this normal, nonexistent me. It's not that I've never done those things, kissed or danced or just "hung out." I have. But it was put-on, a character, a lie. I am so good at it-lying-but I can't lie to myself. I can pretend to be M; I can wear her like a mask. But I can't be her. I'll never be her.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Not much of a morning person?"
"Such a useless time of day," she said, dragging herself upright and taking the cup. "Can't sleep. Can't steal.”

— Victoria Schwab

“I watch him fight back a smile and lose. What comes through isn't smug, or even crooked. It's proud. And I can't help it. I smile a little too.”

— Victoria Schwab

The shared secret of our second lives hangs between us, not like a weight, but like a lifeline.

— Victoria Schwab

I want to be oblivious to the hurt written on her face. I want to be selfish and young and normal. M would be that way. She would need space to grieve. She would rebel because her parents were simply uncool, not because one was wearing a horrifying happy mask and the other was a living ghost. She'd be distant because she was preoccupied with boys or school, not because she's tired from hunting down the Histories of the dead, or distracted by her new hotel-turned-apartment, where the walls are filled with crimes.

— Victoria Schwab

“If you mean a few little things-the exact sound of his voice, the shade of his hair, then okay, yeah. You're going to forget. But Ben isn't those things, you know? He's your brother. He's made up of every moment in his life. You'll never forget all of that.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Wesley's touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces.”

— Victoria Schwab

Agatha has a dangerous ease about her. She's the kind of person you want to like you.

— Victoria Schwab

“Some people forget, he thought. A bad thing happens to them and their mind sweeps in and buries the bad thing deep, and all that's left is a stretch of white in their heads, like fresh snow. Looking at it-at them-you wouldn't even know anything was trapped beneath.
Some people forget, but David remembered everything.”

— Victoria Schwab

“The dead are silent, and objects, when they hold impressions, are quiet until you reach through them. But the touch of living is loud. Living people haven't been compiled, organized -which means they're a jumble of memory and thought and emotion, all tangled up and held at bay only by the silver band of my finger. The ring helps, but it can't block the noise, just the images”

— Victoria Schwab

“There's no way I'm facing them on my own."
"Which one are you afraid of? Lord Sol-in-Ar?"
"Cora."
"The Veskan princess?" Kell laughed. "She's just a child."
"She was just a child-and a nightmarish one at that-but I've heard she's grown into something truly fearsome."
Kell shook his head. "Come on, then," he said, slinging his arm around the prince's shoulder. "I'll defend you."
"My hero.”

— Victoria Schwab

“People are made of so many fragile pieces.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Why did you take this job?" I ask. "It doesn't make sense. You're so young-"
"It was an honor to be promoted," she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role.
"Who did you lose?" I ask.
Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. "I'm a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I've lost everyone.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Aunt Joan broke her hip a few years back. Don't get me wrong, she's still pretty damn fierce. Lightning fast with her cane, in fact. I've got the scars to prove it.”

— Victoria Schwab

“Her bare feet land with light thuds like rain on stones.”

— Victoria Schwab

“We are welcomed to your city, added Princess Cora with a curtsy and a cherubic smile.
Kell shot Rhy a look that said, 'Honestly? This is the girl you're so afraid of?'
Rhy shot him one back that said, 'You should be, too'.”

— Victoria Schwab

Sounds-the stretched-out, far-off kind-drift through the halls, and I close my eyes, trying to break them down.

— Victoria Schwab

“No one suffers as beautifully as you.”

— Victoria Schwab

Her world became a heavy beat, a rhythm, an angry voice.

— Victoria Schwab

“Nods and offers canned monosyables of support ...”

— Victoria Schwab