When Among Crows Quotes

“I don't find it painful to be ordinary.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“That kind of sacrifice creates a debt, and there’s nothing magic likes better than the great hollow of a debt.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Men always mean harm. The question is simply 'when”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“You want to wander the earth in pain. [...] But suffering isn't atonement, Dymitr.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Magic is crooked, and so are we.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Gentle souls cast as devils in humankind’s ongoing stage play of existence. It’s Oppression 101: find a bad guy, and if you can’t, make one up.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“And he doesn’t like religious spaces, in general—the obsession with wrong and right, purity and pollution, modernity and eternity, it doesn’t make sense to him.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“You want to wander the earth in pain,” Ala says. “But suffering isn’t atonement, Dymitr.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Every train station has magic in it, not that Ala can feel it. Some of her kind swear they can smell it, and maybe they can; all zmory have good noses, but hers is average at best. It’s because of how they were built—the train stations, that is, not the noses. They were hoisted above Chicago’s brick buildings in the mid-1910s, with the city refusing to close down cross streets for their construction, so the builders had to get creative. It took them over a decade to complete just the Red Line. There’s always sacrifice in building something that’s never been built before, and sacrifice creates a debt, and debts create a space for magic to rush in. So if the Thorndale Red Line stop hums with it, well—that makes sense to her.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“You have spent too much time with mortals if you expect magic to move in a straight line,” Baba Jaga replies. She points at Ala, and then bends her index finger so it’s shaped like a hook. “Magic is crooked, and so are we.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Like all of the old stories, there is a little truth and a lot of fancy.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“He pinches one of the petals and breaks it away from the flower. It doesn't feel like it's as powerful as it is, but maybe that's just how powerful things are- like the zmory, like Baba Jaga herself, they don't always need to declare themselves.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“It's good to be something new”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“I'm helping you because you're beautiful.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“All witch houses seem to smell the same, like lavender and smoke and salt.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Niko has walked through this apartment before with all the curtains drawn; he knows its impossibilities, how it stands on the edge of the Chicago River in the Loop, but also on top of the Harold’s Chicken in Buena Park, but also overlooking Hyde Park, depending on which segment of the apartment you’re in. Still, he finds himself amazed by the line of light along the river. Chicago always reminds him of a stray line from T. S. Eliot—Unreal City, under the brown fog of a winter dawn—though he knows, of course, that the line refers to London.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Kiedy wejdziesz między wrony musisz krakać tak jak one.*”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Every strzyga has a sowa form, an owl-like shape that they can move into at will.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Almost all the strzygi in the room are women, and that’s no surprise. Dymitr’s father told him that Chicago was a city ruled by monsters, and all those monsters were women—strzyga, zmora, and llorona, each a legend of wronged women, sinful women, mysterious women. Tragic and powerful figures, all, not to be underestimated.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“It’s Oppression 101: find a bad guy, and if you can’t, make one up.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“He asks, “What will it take to convince you that I mean no harm?” “There’s nothing you can say or do that will convince me of that,” Klara says. “Men always mean harm. The question is simply ‘when’.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“He can’t feel the weight of the name, but he thinks she can. A name is a gift, but a name is also a weapon. It makes him vulnerable to her. She can use it to find him, even to curse him. She could, in theory, give it to someone else on his behalf, but she won’t. If she did, its power would be lost; no one can use it against him unless he’s the one to hand it over.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“you will tap into a wellspring of power within yourself,” she said to him. “You can unleash the full extent of that power, or you can let in only a trickle of it—and when you do so, you will see the monstrous parts of our world for what they really are. It requires tremendous control, but you are capable of it. You will become capable of it.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Men always mean harm. The question is simply ‘when’.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Upiór. A horde of them. Most of the quasi-mortal beings of his home country have been called vampires at one point or another. For the upiór, the term is perhaps the closest to being accurate—but they aren’t similar to zmory, or strzygi, or even wraiths.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“Ala is the last to arrive in the lobby of the hospice center ten minutes later. Niko, standing by the door, wears a T-shirt he got from the lost and found, one with three wolves and a moon on it, and he’s not looking at Dymitr. Dymitr, closer to the withering fiddle-leaf fig tree next to the front desk, is shrugging on his jacket, and he’s not looking at Niko. Sha, her hair now bound back with black ribbon, is marveling at them both like they’re a fireworks display.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“So you know a little about magic,” she says. “You know that a name is powerful. And you know, I assume, what this place is?” He shrugs. “A nightly buffet, laid for creatures who feast on human fear? Yes. I know.” “You make us sound so uncultured.” She gestures to the curtains. “Playing in that room is the movie Alien. 1979. Ridley Scott. A symphony of tension, rising to shock, disgust, horror. Mellowing to a tremulous kind of anxiety. For those zmory with far more delicate palates than most—for the rest, we offer a slasher movie every Wednesday. Quick, hot scares, like a plate of french fries.” She touches her hand to her belly. “Delicious. But not particularly refined.” “Fascinating.” He swallows more beer.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“that a name is powerful. And you know, I assume, what this place is?” He shrugs. “A nightly buffet, laid for creatures who feast on human fear? Yes. I know.” “You make us sound so uncultured.” She gestures to the curtains. “Playing in that room is the movie Alien. 1979. Ridley Scott. A symphony of tension, rising to shock, disgust, horror. Mellowing to a tremulous kind of anxiety. For those zmory with far more delicate palates than most—for the rest, we offer a slasher movie every Wednesday. Quick, hot scares, like a plate of french fries.” She touches her hand to her belly. “Delicious. But not particularly refined.” “Fascinating.” He swallows more beer.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

“That kind of sacrifice creates a debt, and there’s nothing magic likes better than the great hollow of a debt. And so magic nestled here, heedless of what the adherents of this particular religion would think of it.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows