Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to know if it was real or if I’m expected to grow and wither here for nothing more than superstition. Wouldn’t that be funny? If it were just a story, passed from one Prior to the next until all of us forgot that it was fiction? All of us, given to the same mad delusion?”

— V.E. Schwab

452. “I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions.”

— V.E. Schwab

453. “A vein of power. An artery.”

— V.E. Schwab

454. “Dreamer is too soft a word. It conjures thoughts of silken sleep, of lazy days in fields of tall grass, of charcoal smudges on soft parchment.”

— V.E. Schwab

455. “She wants to hold the night like a chocolate on her tongue, savor every second before it melts.”

— V.E. Schwab

456. “But Henry Strauss wakes her with kisses. He plants them one by one, like flower bulbs, lets them blossom on her skin.”

— V.E. Schwab

457. “We want to prove things, in life, more than we want to disprove them. We want to believe.”

— V.E. Schwab

458. “All her life, she wanted a house and a garden and a room of her own. But tucked inside that want was something else: a family. Parents who smothered her with love. Siblings who teased because they cared. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews – in her mind a family was a sprawling thing, an orchard full of roots and branches.”

— V.E. Schwab

459. “Alucard’s eyes had gone sharp and empty at the same time, as if he were focusing, just on something else, something far away.”

— V.E. Schwab

460. “They always know, they just don’t want to accept the cost. The soul is the easiest thing to trade. It’s the time no one considers.”

— V.E. Schwab

461. “I’m fine, he says, in that automatic way people always answer when you ask them how they are, even though his heart is hanging open on its hinges.”

— V.E. Schwab

462. “Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. The difference between Victor and Eli, he suspected, wasn’t their opinion on EOs. It was their reaction to them.”

— V.E. Schwab

463. “Maybe not for you,” said the king. “But time isn’t the same for the mad and the blind.”

— V.E. Schwab

464. “Yes. Because unless you plan to wed me yourself – and don’t get me wrong, I think we’d make a dashing pair – I must try and find a mate.”

— V.E. Schwab

465. “She dragged her head up and saw Kell standing in the road, the strange magical boy in his black coat, looking breathless and angry. Lila couldn’t believe it.”

— V.E. Schwab

466. “Most people have a shelf of cups. Henry has a wall. They hang from hooks on a mounted rack, five across and seven down. Some of them are patterned and some of them are plain and no two are the same.”

— V.E. Schwab

467. “Normal was such a fragile thing, so easily upset by even good intentions.”

— V.E. Schwab

468. “Black curls. Pale eyes. Strong jaw. Sloping shoulders and a cupid’s bow mouth. A man she’d never meet, a life she’d never know, a world she could only dream of.”

— V.E. Schwab

469. “Estele, who believes that the new God is a filigreed thing. She thinks that He belongs to cities and kings, and that He sits over Paris on a golden pillow, and has no time for peasants, no place among the wood and stone and river water.”

— V.E. Schwab

470. “I apologize for shooting you in the leg,” said Lila. “I was entirely myself.”

— V.E. Schwab

471. “But life is pointless without pleasure.”

— V.E. Schwab

472. “Adeline had wanted to be a tree. To grow wild and deep, belong to no one but the ground beneath her feet, and the sky above, just like Estele. It would be an unconventional life, and perhaps a little lonely, but at least it would be hers. She would belong to no one but herself.”

— V.E. Schwab

473. “Henry wonders, as they wait in the queue, if some people have natural style, or if they simply have the discipline to curate themselves every day.”

— V.E. Schwab

474. “Walking beneath the copper canopies, she saw that they were dappled to look like trees, starlight shining through the leaves, and Lila thought, once more, what a strange world she’d stumbled into, and how glad she was to be there.”

— V.E. Schwab

475. “Pain can be beautiful,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It can transform. It can create.”

— V.E. Schwab

476. “But the sorrow has faded, replaced by stubborn rage, and she resolves to kindle it, to shield and nurture the flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out.”

— V.E. Schwab

477. “She shook her head, baffled and amused. “Jesus, Marcella, anyone ever told you that you’re batshit crazy?” Marcella pursed her lips. “Several times,” she said. “It’s an insult men love to aim at ambitious women.”

— V.E. Schwab

478. “Go to parties!” said Maggie. “Drink cheap beer! Make bad choices! Date pretty girls!” He leaned back in his chair. “Do pretty girls count as bad choices, or are those two separate things?”

— V.E. Schwab

479. “He is a gruff old man, but Addie likes him. Sees the sadness in his anger, the guardedness of grief.”

— V.E. Schwab

480. “She moves among the books as if they’re friends. And perhaps, in a way, they are.”

— V.E. Schwab

481. “Spells are for witches, and witches are too often burned.”

— V.E. Schwab

482. “Books feed hungry minds. Tips feed the cat?”

— V.E. Schwab

483. “Everyone has a mix of humanity and magic in them.”

— V.E. Schwab

484. “Fear belongs to those with more to lose.”

— V.E. Schwab

485. “Belief is a bit like gravity. Enough people believe a thing, and it becomes as solid and real as the ground beneath your feet. But when you’re the only one holding on to an idea, a memory, a girl, it’s hard to keep it from floating away.”

— V.E. Schwab

486. “What a waste of life, to stand around and think so much on every little thing.”

— V.E. Schwab

487. “He didn’t realize how much connective tissue was made up of guilt. Without the weight of it, he feels dizzy and light.”

— V.E. Schwab

488. “She hates this part. She shouldn’t have lingered. Should have been out of sight as well as out of mind, but there’s always that nagging hope that this time, it will be different, that this time, they will remember.”

— V.E. Schwab

489. “Anyone who follows me online knows I have a rather fraught relationship with stories. Or rather, with bringing them to life. With holding up the whole messy beast until my arms shake and my head hurts and I know if I drop it now, before it’s ready, it will shatter, and I’ll have to sweep it up, and I’ll lose at least a few of the pieces along the way. And so, while I held up Addie’s story, so many people held up me.”

— V.E. Schwab

490. “It doesn’t bother you, that everyone believes different things?” “Why should it?” he asked. “We all believe the same thing really, we simply give it different names. Hardly a crime.” Lila.”

— V.E. Schwab

491. “And by the time I’m thirty,” she’d said, “everyone I know will be dead. Except for Eli.”

— V.E. Schwab

492. “And when she does look up, her gaze always goes to the edge of town. “A dreamer,” scorns her mother. “A dreamer,” mourns her father. “A dreamer,” warns Estele.”

— V.E. Schwab

493. “It reminded her of the sea and the night sky. It reminded her of sharp knives and stars and freedom.”

— V.E. Schwab

494. “What are you?” she asked. “A monster,” said Kell hoarsely. “You’d better let me go.” The girl gave a small, mocking laugh. “Monsters don’t faint in the presence of ladies.” “Ladies don’t dress like men and pick pockets,” retorted Kell. Her smile only sharpened. “What are you really?” “Tied to your bed,” said Kell matter-of-factly. “And?” His brow furrowed. “And in trouble.”

— V.E. Schwab

495. “Lila smiled at that, one of those smiles that made Kell profoundly nervous. The kind of smile usually followed by a weapon.”

— V.E. Schwab

496. “She has seen maps of course, but ink and paper hold nothing to this. To the salt smell, the murmur of waves, the hypnotic draw of the tide. To the scope and scale of the sea, and the knowledge that somewhere, beyond the horizon, there is more.”

— V.E. Schwab

497. “Adeline is sixteen now, and everyone speaks of her as if she is a summer bloom, something to be plucked, and propped within a vase, intended only to flower and then to rot. Like Isabelle, who dreams of family instead of freedom, and seems content to briefly blossom and then wither. No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky.”

— V.E. Schwab

498. “A man she’d never meet, a life she’d never know, a word she could only dream of.”

— V.E. Schwab

499. “Her hair, once pale, now shone red, a shock of color against her still porcelain skin, bold as blood. It skimmed her shoulders as she twirled, and bowed, a bright streak at the center of a deadly circle. Ojka danced, and the metal kept pace, the perfect partner to her fluid movements, and the entire time, she kept her eyes closed.”

— V.E. Schwab

500. “After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.”

— V.E. Schwab