Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every end is a new beginning.”

— V.E. Schwab

2. “There is a defiance in being a dreamer.”

— V.E. Schwab

3. “What gives you the right to play judge and jury and executioner?”

— V.E. Schwab

4. “Perhaps she was glass. But glass is only brittle until it breaks. Then it’s sharp.”

— V.E. Schwab

5. “Sometimes you had to pretend, everyone knew that. Pretend to be happy. Pretend to be brave. Pretend to be strong. If you pretended long enough, it eventually came true. Pretending.”

— V.E. Schwab

6. “But the truth is, death is everywhere. Death comes for the roses and the apples, it comes for the mice and the birds. It comes for us all. Why should death stop us from living?”

— V.E. Schwab

7. “It is sad to forget. But it’s a lonely thing to be forgotten.”

— V.E. Schwab

8. “She is learning. It is a lonely education.”

— V.E. Schwab

9. “Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?”

— V.E. Schwab

10. “A body needs sleep. Without it, the heart gets weak. The mind gets tired. And tired minds are pliable things.”

— V.E. Schwab

11. “Freedom is a pair of trousers and a buttoned coat. A man’s tunic and a tricorne hat. If only she had known. The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.”

— V.E. Schwab

13. “One adventure at a time.”

— V.E. Schwab

14. “Sleep is for the rich and the bored.”

— V.E. Schwab

15. “I don’t want to survive. I want to thrive.”

— V.E. Schwab

16. “If you decide to leave- when you decide to leave- don’t do it without saying good-bye.”

— V.E. Schwab

17. “I’m not bitter,” grumbled Parrish back. “I’m broke.”

— V.E. Schwab

18. “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.”

— V.E. Schwab

19. “But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things – she would go mad. She has gone mad. What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives – or to find strength in a very long one.”

— V.E. Schwab

20. “The earth beneath your feet does not care you will be king.”

— V.E. Schwab

21. “The life is the minutes you want minus one.”

— V.E. Schwab

22. “A promise you can’t keep is just another lie.”

— V.E. Schwab

23. “She fell in love with the darkness many times, fell in love with a human once.”

— V.E. Schwab

24. “How could anyone forget this girl, when she takes up so much space? She fills the room with stories, with laughter, with warm and light.”

— V.E. Schwab

25. “But that way lies madness, and she has learned not to follow.”

— V.E. Schwab

26. “Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines.”

— V.E. Schwab

27. “Catch me if you can.”

— V.E. Schwab

28. “And perhaps that was the test of faith, to know, and not to say, to live with knowing, and let the truth live only in one’s head.”

— V.E. Schwab

29. “Better to be friendly, without being friends.”

— V.E. Schwab

30. “What drives you back here?” he asks. Addie shrugs. “Call it nostalgia.” He lifts his chin. “I call it weakness. To only walk in circles when you could make new roads.”

— V.E. Schwab

31. “The steps to solving a problem, from elementary math to breaking out of a police station, remained the same. A simple matter of understanding the problem, and selecting the best solution.”

— V.E. Schwab

32. “The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”

— V.E. Schwab

33. “What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided – a memory, a photograph, a name.”

— V.E. Schwab

34. “Deja vu. Deja su. Deja vecu.”

— V.E. Schwab

35. “If some part of her wavered, if some part of her wanted to give in, it did not last beyond a moment. There is a defiance in being a dreamer.”

— V.E. Schwab

36. “They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.”

— V.E. Schwab

37. “March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”

— V.E. Schwab

38. “You make cheating death sound so simple.” “We do seem awfully good at it,” said Victor cheerfully. He lifted his glass. “To never dying.” Eli lifted his. “To being remembered.” Their glasses clinked as Eli added, “Forever.”

— V.E. Schwab

39. “Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive. Simple as that.”

— V.E. Schwab

40. “For the ones who dream of stranger worlds.”

— V.E. Schwab

41. “All she knows is that she is tired, and he is the place she wants to rest.”

— V.E. Schwab

42. “Pain reminds us that we are alive.”

— V.E. Schwab

43. “Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?”

— V.E. Schwab

44. “I want to live, but getting close to death is the only way to feel alive.”

— V.E. Schwab

45. “Lo exasperante del tiempo es que nunca es suficiente.”

— V.E. Schwab

46. “To those who go looking for doors, are brave enough to open the ones they find, and sometimes bold enough to make their own.”

— V.E. Schwab

47. “A head gets lost, but a heart knows home.”

— V.E. Schwab

48. “We are all immortal until proven otherwise?”

— V.E. Schwab

49. “Love and loss,” he said, “are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”

— V.E. Schwab

50. “Everything changes, foolish girl. It is the nature of the world. Nothing stays the same.”

— V.E. Schwab