Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “He may be a sun, but she is a shining comet, dragging their focus like burning meteors in her wake.”

— V.E. Schwab

102. “You move among them like a ghost, because you are not one of them. You cannot live like them. You cannot love like them. You cannot belong with them. You belong to me. With me.”

— V.E. Schwab

103. “What’s life without a little trouble?”

— V.E. Schwab

104. “You must make time for that which matters, for that which defines you: your passion, your progress, your pen. Take it up, and write your own story.”

— V.E. Schwab

105. “I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.”

— V.E. Schwab

106. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.”

— V.E. Schwab

107. “After all, if you run far enough, no one can catch you.”

— V.E. Schwab

108. “His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.”

— V.E. Schwab

109. “She will come back to this moment a thousand times. In frustration, and regret, in sorrow, and self-pity, and unbridled rage. She will come to face the fact that she cursed herself before he ever did.”

— V.E. Schwab

110. “Palimpsest. She doesn’t know the word just yet, but fifty years from now, in a Paris salon, she will hear it for the first time, the idea of the past blotted out, written over by the present, and think of this moment in Le Mans. A.”

— V.E. Schwab

111. “Only fools are certain.”

— V.E. Schwab

112. “The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”

— V.E. Schwab

113. “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.”

— V.E. Schwab

114. “And then he whispers three words into her hair. “I love you,” he says, and Addie wonders if this is love, this gentle thing. If it is meant to be this soft, this kind. The difference between heat, and warmth. Passion, and contentment. “I love you too,” she says. She wants it to be true.”

— V.E. Schwab

115. “No one suffers as beautifully as you do.”

— V.E. Schwab

116. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

— V.E. Schwab

117. “You deserve someone who loves you as you are. the good and the bad and the maddening.”

— V.E. Schwab

118. “Careful is a calculated risk,” he said. “And I’m very good at making those.”

— V.E. Schwab

119. “There is nowhere you go,” said the Antari to her prince, “that I cannot follow.”

— V.E. Schwab

120. “It is a car crash in slow motion, and Addie knew it was bound to happen, the inevitable collision of people and place, time and circumstance.”

— V.E. Schwab

121. “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” “I get the feeling that’s not what Thomas Jefferson meant,” muttered Mitch.”

— V.E. Schwab

122. “Nothing is all good or all bad. Life is so much messier than that.”

— V.E. Schwab

123. “You know so little of war. Battles may be fought from the outside in, but wars are won from the inside out.”

— V.E. Schwab

124. “She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat.”

— V.E. Schwab

125. “Kell swept Lila up into his arms, amazed at her lightness. She took up so much space in the world – in his world – it was hard to imagine her being so slight. In his mind, she was made of stone.”

— V.E. Schwab

126. “And she is tired. Unspeakably tired. But there is no question she has lived. “Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.” And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”

— V.E. Schwab

127. “I am so happy. I am so scared. The two, it turns out, can walk together, hand in hand.”

— V.E. Schwab

128. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because visions weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades... Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end... everyone wants to be remembered.”

— V.E. Schwab

129. “But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten, To remember when know one else does.”

— V.E. Schwab

130. “These days, everyone’s looking down,” muses Sam. “It’s nice to see someone looking up.”

— V.E. Schwab

131. “Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention.”

— V.E. Schwab

132. “That’s the trouble with March – the warmth never lasts. There’s that narrow stretch when it parades as spring, just enough for you to thaw if you’re sitting in the sun, but then it’s gone. The sun has moved on. The shadows have swept in.”

— V.E. Schwab

133. “Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling – the hope – that everyone was born with the ability to do something, that if he just searched hard enough he would find it. His gift. His purpose.”

— V.E. Schwab

134. “Such is the quandary when it comes to magic, that it is not an issue of strength but of balance. For too little power, and we become weak. Too much, and we become something else entirely.”

— V.E. Schwab

135. “Some people are repelled by darkness. Others are drawn to it, to the static crackle of power in a place. To the hum of magic, or the presence of the dead. They can see these forces staining the world like ink in water.”

— V.E. Schwab

136. “Outnumbered is not the same as outmatched.”

— V.E. Schwab

137. “Life – the way it really is – is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse. – Joseph Brodsky.”

— V.E. Schwab

138. “So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new.”

— V.E. Schwab

139. “It will hurt. And it will pass. All things do.”

— V.E. Schwab

140. “Perhaps you are haunting me. What a comforting thought. Maybe it’s you in the darkness.”

— V.E. Schwab

141. “You aren’t some avenging angel, Eli,” he said. “You’re not blessed, or divine, or burdened. You’re a science experiment.”

— V.E. Schwab

142. “Be lost. Give up. give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.”

— V.E. Schwab

143. “You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”

— V.E. Schwab

144. “Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.”

— V.E. Schwab

145. “Everyone thinks I have a death wish, you know? But I don’t want to die – dying is easy. No, I want to live, but getting close to death is the only way to feel alive. And once you do, it makes you realize that everything you were actually doing before wasn’t actually living. It was just making do. Call me crazy, but I think we do the best living when the stakes are high.”

— V.E. Schwab

146. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry. But I’m here now, so you can’t die,” he said, his voice finally breaking. “Don’t you see how rude that would be, when I’ve come so far?”

— V.E. Schwab

147. “The darkness whispers in her ear, arms wrapped like a scarf around her throat. I am always with you.”

— V.E. Schwab

148. “I am Delilah Bard, she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind. Feeling suitably empowered, she set her back to the ship, and gazed out at the sprawling night ahead.”

— V.E. Schwab

149. “Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

— V.E. Schwab

150. “You know,” she’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.”

— V.E. Schwab