Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Sure I do,” countered Lila cheerfully. “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

153. “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

154. “But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things – she would go mad. She has gone mad.”

— V.E. Schwab

155. “You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

157. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

159. “Am i the devil, or the darkness?”

— V.E. Schwab

160. “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

161. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

163. “Addie has had three hundred years to practice her father’s art, to whittle herself down to a few essential truths, to learn the things she cannot do without.”

— V.E. Schwab

164. “But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world.”

— V.E. Schwab

165. “Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke? Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.”

— V.E. Schwab

166. “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. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.” “Why did you stop?” Because time doesn’t work like photos. Click, and it stays still. Blink, and it leaps forward.”

— V.E. Schwab

167. “A house like this has too much history, and history always brings it’s share of ghosts. But it’s not a bad thing,” he adds, packing up his kit. “Ghosts were people once, and people come in all ways, good and bad and what’s between. Sure, maybe some are out to frighten, but others, I think, are just watching, wishing they could help.”

— V.E. Schwab

168. “For every shadow, there must be light.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

170. “A good friend is very hard to find.”

— V.E. Schwab

171. “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

172. “There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world.”

— V.E. Schwab

173. “The darkness is no place to be alone.”

— V.E. Schwab

174. “SYDNEY Clarke died on a cool March day. It was just before lunch, and it was all Serena’s fault.”

— V.E. Schwab

175. “The sky outside is a static gray, a thin mist of rain blurring the buildings. It is the kind of day designed for wood fires, and mugs of tea, and well-loved books.”

— V.E. Schwab

176. “He lifted his glass. “To never dying.” Eli lifted his. “To being remembered.” Their glasses clinked as Eli added, “Forever.”

— V.E. Schwab

177. “Blink and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing NOT to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents faces.”

— V.E. Schwab

178. “I love you, Kell, but I had no interest in matching tattoos.”

— V.E. Schwab

179. “Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.”

— V.E. Schwab

180. “Why would anyone trade a lifetime of talent for a few years of glory?” Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”

— V.E. Schwab

181. “He tastes like the air at night, heady with the weight of summer storms. He tastes like the faint traces of far-off woodsmoke, a fire dying in the dark. He tastes like the forest, and somehow, impossibly, like home.”

— V.E. Schwab

182. “If red was the color of magic in balance – of harmony between power and humanity – then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint.”

— V.E. Schwab

183. “Free – such a small word for such a magnificent thing.”

— V.E. Schwab

184. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful.”

— V.E. Schwab

185. “Pain, Victor had learned, turned people into animals.”

— V.E. Schwab

186. “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

187. “Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. “He doesn’t know how patient you are,” he said. “Doesn’t know you like I do.” Eli cleaned the blood from his hand. “No,” he said softly. “No one ever has.”

— V.E. Schwab

188. “Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them.”

— V.E. Schwab

189. “She was the kind of pretty that steals your breath, and the kind you can’t really capture in a photo, because the magic is in the movement.”

— V.E. Schwab

190. “We don’t choose what we are, but we choose what we do.”

— V.E. Schwab

191. “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

192. “Put the right words into the world, never know what you’ll catch.”

— V.E. Schwab

193. “Husband. A word like a millstone, all weight and no warmth.”

— V.E. Schwab

194. “Kings needn’t raise their voices to be heard.”

— V.E. Schwab

195. “They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time – angry, lonely, content – but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid.”

— V.E. Schwab

196. “Olivia Prior has never been a quiet girl. She has always made a point of making noise, everywhere she goes, in part to remind people that just because she cannot speak, does not mean that she is silent, and in part because she simply likes the weight of sound, likes the way it takes up space.”

— V.E. Schwab

197. “In myths, the hero survives. The evil is vanquished. The world is set right. Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals. The dead are buried. The living move on. Nothing changes. Everything changes. This is a myth. This is not a myth.”

— V.E. Schwab

198. “If Eli really was a hero, and Victor meant to stop him, did that make him a villain?”

— V.E. Schwab

199. “Small places make for small lives.”

— V.E. Schwab

200. “Estele, who belongs to everyone, and no one, and herself.”

— V.E. Schwab