Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Pretending not to be sad was the hardest, but looking sad made people think you were weak, and when you were already a foot too short and a measure too small, and a girl on top of that, you had to work twice as hard to convince them it wasn’t true.”

— V.E. Schwab

302. “Why do you want to die? I don’t, she’d say. I just want to live.”

— V.E. Schwab

303. “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

304. “They became vessels, conduits, for its will, and through them, it twisted whim into reality, blurring the lines, breaking them down, creating and destroying and corrupting everything.”

— V.E. Schwab

305. “And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer.”

— V.E. Schwab

306. “It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.”

— V.E. Schwab

307. “Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

309. “I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”

— V.E. Schwab

310. “Faith. It seemed a shallow substitution, but Kell supposed he couldn’t blame the Grey-worlders. Everyone needed to believe in something, and without magic, they has settled for a lesser god. One full of holes and mysteries and made-up rules. The irony was that they had abandoned magic long before it abandoned them, smothered it with this almighty God of theirs.”

— V.E. Schwab

311. “A park in London. A patio in Prague. A tea room in Edinburgh.”

— V.E. Schwab

312. “And in the morning it looks like ghosts have danced across the kitchen, and they pretend there were two instead of one.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

314. “But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.”

— V.E. Schwab

315. “Magic might live in the blood, but not in the bloodline. It wasn’t passed from parent to child. It chose its own way. Chose its shape. The strong sometimes gave birth to the weak, or the other way around. Fire wielders were often born from water mages, earth movers from healers. Power could not be cultivated like a crop, distilled through generations.”

— V.E. Schwab

316. “Magic and magician must between them balance. Magic itself is chaos. The magician must be calm. A fractured self is a poor vessel for power, spilling power without focus or measure from every crack.”

— V.E. Schwab

317. “She fills the room with stories, with laughter, with warmth and light.”

— V.E. Schwab

318. “She spins and twirls, and dances partner-less across the snow, laughing at the strange and simple magic of the moment.”

— V.E. Schwab

319. “But art,” she says with a quieter smile, “art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”

— V.E. Schwab

320. “The doctors gave him a few months, and he told everyone, and do you know what they did? They couldn’t handle it. They were so caught up in their grief, they mourned him before he was even dead. There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place.”

— V.E. Schwab

321. “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

322. “Maybe we are broken. But we put ourselves back together. We survived. That’s what makes us so powerful. And as for family – well, blood is always family, but family doesn’t always have to be blood.”

— V.E. Schwab

323. “Lila Bard lived by a simple rule: if a thing was worth having, it was worth taking.”

— V.E. Schwab

324. “The night Kate Harker decided to burn down the school chapel, she wasn’t angry or drunk. She was desperate.”

— V.E. Schwab

325. “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

326. “Alucard knew the Maresh palace better than he should. Rhy had shown him a dozen ways in and out; hidden doors and secret halls, a curtain pulled aside to reveal a stairwell, a door set flush with the wall. All the ways a friend could sneak into a room, or a lover into bed.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

328. “I saw an Elephant, in Paris.”

— V.E. Schwab

329. “And dreams can never hurt you. That’s what her mother said. Of course, she knows now it isn’t true. Dreams can make you hurt yourself, dreams can make you do so many things, if you’re not careful.”

— V.E. Schwab

330. “He wished for the first time in his life that he believed in God.”

— V.E. Schwab

331. “Are you afraid yet? Are you afraid?”

— V.E. Schwab

332. “The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.”

— V.E. Schwab

333. “Feral magic in a lover’s form.”

— V.E. Schwab

334. “The humor, along with that horrible false cheer and fake smile, was gone, wiped away. In a way, Eli wasn’t quite as frightening, because she’d always been able to see the monster in his eyes. Now it had finally stopped hiding.”

— V.E. Schwab

335. “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. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”

— V.E. Schwab

336. “Ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught.”

— V.E. Schwab

337. “After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see. “Don’t you remember?” She told him then, “When you were nothing but shadow and smoke?”

— V.E. Schwab

338. “That we could be more. Hell, we could be heroes.” “We could be dead,” said Eli. “That’s a risk everyone takes by living.”

— V.E. Schwab

339. “Love doesn’t keep us from freezing to death, Kell,” she continued, “or starving, or being knifed for the coins in our pocket. Love doesn’t buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you need for nothing.”

— V.E. Schwab

340. “A soul, for copper coins on a Paris dock.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

342. “Delilah Bard – always a thief, recently a magician, and one day, hopefully, a pirate – was running as fast as she could.”

— V.E. Schwab

343. “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

344. “I’m not going to die,” she said. “Not till I’ve seen it.” “Seen what?” Her smile widened. “Everything.” Kell.”

— V.E. Schwab

345. “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

346. “She forgave him nothing. She owed him everything.”

— V.E. Schwab

347. “Everything starts with belief. With faith.”

— V.E. Schwab

348. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

350. “Lila was nineteen. Nineteen, and every one of the years felt carved into her.”

— V.E. Schwab