iara > iara's Quotes

“And on the seventh day, the Lynch brothers discovered they were friends once more.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?"
"Maybe I dreamt you," he said.
"Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome.
One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment , but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself.
Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

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

“Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: that was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Depending on where you began the story, it was about Noah Czerny.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“But what [Gansey] said was, "I'm going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn't just for Blue, either. All of us."
Ronan said, "I'm always straight."
Adam replied, "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told."
Blue said, "Okay.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“It shouldn't have happened at all, but their friendship had been cemented in only the time it took to get to school that morning - Adam demonstrating how to fasten the Camaro's ground wire more securely, Gansey lifting Adam's bike halfway into the trunk so they could ride to school together, Adam confessing he worked at a mechanic's to put himself through Aglionby, and Gansey turning to the passenger seat and asking, "What do you know about Welsh kings?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“She called Gansey.
"Blue?" he said.
Just his voice. Her heart tethered itself. Not completely, but enough to stop quivering so much. She closed her eyes”
― Maggie Stiefvater

“Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all palm against palm against palm, thumb crossed over thumb, fingers pressed into wrist bone--and then Adam was facing him and he released his hand.

The ocean burned.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned 18.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them.
Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness.
Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“I am being perfectly fucking civil.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,' he said. 'Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.' He flailed an arm toward the stars.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one.
Ronan wasn't a fan of lamps.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.

Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey first met him.

"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"

"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.

Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?"

Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"

Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“What do you want, Adam?
To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“There were many versions of Gansey, but this one had been rare since the introduction of Adam's taming presence. It was also Ronan's favorite. It was the opposite of Gansey's 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 wouldn't show up in other versions. Was it the shield beneath the lake that had unleashed it? Orla's orange bikini? The bashed-up remains of his rebuilt Henrietta and the fake IDs they'd returned to? Ronan didn't really care. All that mattered was that something had struck the match, and Gansey was burning.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Arbores loqui latine. The trees speak Latin.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Calla readjusted, wrapping the silk around her other thigh instead. "Which one's he again? The pretty one?"
Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Blue's look said, I'm so, so sorry. Gansey's said, Am I the pretty one?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves