Jay > Jay's Quotes

“I can hear the change in Kaz's breathing when he looks at you."
"You... you can?"
"It catches every time, like he's never seen you before.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“This,” Neil flicked his finger to indicate the two of them, “isn’t worthless.”
“There is no ‘this’. This is nothing.”
“And I am nothing,” Neil prompted. When Andrew gestured confirmation, Neil said, “And as you’ve always said, you want nothing.”
Andrew stared stone-faced back at him.”
― Nora Sakavic, The King's Men

“I hate you,” Andrew said casually. He took a last long drag from his cigarette and flicked it off the roof. “You were supposed to be a side effect of the drugs.”
“I’m not a hallucination,” Neil said, nonplussed.
“You are a pipe dream,” Andrew said.”
― Nora Sakavic, The King's Men

“I don't care to be pretty," Blue shot back hotly, "I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, 'You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.'
Gansey died.
'Goodbye,' Noah said. 'Don't throw it away.'
He quietly slid from time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“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

“People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Forever

“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

“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

“Fate," Blue replied, glowering at her mother, "is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“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 his 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 far longer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

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

“How do you feel about helicopters?"
There was a long pause. "How do you mean? Ethically?"
"As a mode of transportation."
"Faster than camels, but less sustainable.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Blue,” he warned, but his voice was chaotic. This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey.

She said, “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Where do you live?"
Adam's mouth was very set. "A place made for leaving"
"That's not really an answer."
"It's not really a place.”
― Maggie Stiefvater

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

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

“You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Casually, out of the view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver's seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue.

This was not allowed.

He knew it was not allowed, by rules he himself had set... She would not see the gesture, anyway. She would ignore it if she did. His heart hummed.

Blue touched his fingertips.

Just this--

He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His chest felt warm.

This was not allowed.

Ronan had not seen; Adam was still sleeping. The only casualty was his pulse.

-Page 36 <3”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“A floorboard cracked; knuckles tapped once on the open door. Adam looked up to see Niall Lynch standing in the doorway. No, it was Ronan, face lit bright on one side, in stark shadow on the other, looking powerful and at ease with his thumbs tucked in the pockets of his jeans, leather bracelets looped over his wrist, feet bare.
He wordlessly crossed the floor and sat beside Adam on the mattress. When he held out his hand, Adam put the model into it.
“This old thing,” Ronan said. He turned the front tyre, and again the music played out of it. They sat like that for a few minutes, as Ronan examined the car and turned each wheel to play a different tune. Adam watched how intently Ronan studied the seams, his eyelashes low over his light eyes. Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam.
Once, when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the scraggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy gray sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.
That was this kiss.
They kissed again. Adam felt it in more than his lips.
Ronan sat back, his eyes closed, swallowing. Adam watched his chest rise and fall, his eyebrows furrow. He felt as bright and dreamy and imaginary as the light through the window.
He did not understand anything.
It was a long moment before Ronan opened his eyes, and when he did, his expression was complicated. He stood up. He was still looking at Adam, and Adam was looking back, but neither said anything. Probably Ronan wanted something from him, but Adam didn’t know what to say. He was a magician, Persephone had said, and his magic was making connections between disparate things. Only now he was too full of white, fuzzy light to make any sort of logical connections. He knew that of all the options in the world, Ronan Lynch was the most difficult version of any of them. He knew that Ronan was not a thing to be experimented with. He knew his mouth still felt warm. He knew he had started his entire time at Aglionby certain that all he wanted to do was get as far away from this state and everything in it as possible.
He was pretty sure he had just been Ronan’s first kiss.
“I’m gonna go downstairs,” Ronan said.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I wasn't talking to you, Lynch. I need someone with a soul.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“He said, “I know somebody you could kiss.”
“Who?” She realized his eyes were amused. “Oh, wait.”
He shrugged. He was maybe the only person Blue knew who could preserve the integrity of a shrug while lying down. “It’s not like you’re going to kill me. I mean, if you were curious.”
She hadn’t thought she was curious. It hadn’t been an option, after all. Not being able to kiss someone was a lot like being poor. She tried not to dwell on the things she couldn’t have.
But now—
“Okay,” she said.
“What?”
“I said okay.”
He blushed. Or rather, because he was dead, he became normal colored. “Uh.” He propped himself on an elbow. “Well.” She unburied her face from the pillow. “Just, like—”
He leaned toward her. Blue felt a thrill for a half a second. No, more like a quarter second. Because after that she felt the too-firm pucker of his tense lips. His mouth mashed her lips until it met teeth. The entire thing was at once slimy and ticklish and hilarious.
They both gasped an embarrassed laugh. Noah said, “Bah!” Blue considered wiping her mouth, but felt that would be rude. It was all fairly underwhelming.
She said, “Well.”
“Wait,” Noah replied, “waitwaitwait.” He pulled one of Blue’s hairs out of his mouth. “I wasn’t ready.”
He shook out his hands as if Blue’s lips were a sporting event and cramping was a very real possibility.
“Go,” Blue said.
This time they only got within a breath of each other’s lips when they both began to laugh. She closed the distance and was rewarded with another kiss that felt a lot like kissing a dishwasher.
“I’m doing something wrong?” she suggested.
“Sometimes it’s better with tongue,” he replied dubiously.
They regarded each other.
Blue squinted, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?”
“Hey!” he protested. “It’s weird for me, ‘cause it’s you.”
“Well, it’s weird for me because it’s you.”
“We can stop.”
“Maybe we should.”
Noah pushed himself up farther on his elbow and gazed at the ceiling vaguely. Finally, he dropped his eyes back to her. “You’ve seen, like, movies. Of kisses, right? Your lips need to be, like, wanting to be kissed.”
Blue touched her mouth. “What are they doing now?”
“Like, bracing themselves.”
She pursed and unpursed her lips. She saw his point.
“So imagine one of those,” Noah suggested.
She sighed and sifted through her memories until she found one that would do. It wasn’t a movie kiss, however. It was the kiss the dreaming tree had showed her in Cabeswater. Her first and only kiss with Gansey, right before he died. She thought about his nice mouth when he smiled. About his pleasant eyes when he laughed. She closed her eyes.
Placing an elbow on the other side of her head, Noah leaned close and kissed her once more. This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her. One of his cold hands slid behind her neck and he kissed her again, lips parted. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

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

“His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match.
<...>
“Headlights? That’s hardcore, Parrish.” Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all 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

“Gansey had no idea how old Blue was. He knew she'd just finished eleventh grade. Maybe she was sixteen. Maybe she was eighteen. Maybe she was twenty-two and just very short and remedial.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“If it had a social security number, Ronan had fought with it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Tell me," Artemus whispered, " when you dream, do you dream of the stars?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King