Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Date. A date is something made, something planned; not a chance of opportunity, but time set aside at one point for another, a moment in the future.”

— V.E. Schwab

352. “I don’t want to stay here,” Holland answered flatly. “I want to go home.”

— V.E. Schwab

353. “I would have lost my mind.” “Oh, I did,” she says blithely. “But when you live long enough, even madness ends.”

— V.E. Schwab

354. “Eli, who believed in God and had a monster inside just like Victor, but knew how to hide it better.”

— V.E. Schwab

355. “We... ruin... all... we touch.”

— V.E. Schwab

356. “A hand shakes Adeline awake. For a moment, she is out of place, out of time. Sleep clings to her edges, and with it, the dream – it must have been a dream – of prayers made to silent gods, of deals made in the dark, of being forgotten. Her imagination has always been a vivid thing. “Wake up,” says a voice, one she has known all her life.”

— V.E. Schwab

357. “Tired can be a kind of sick, if it lasts long enough.”

— V.E. Schwab

358. “The world should be getting larger. Instead, she feels it shrinking, tightening like chains around her limbs as the flat lines of her own body begin to curve out against it, and suddenly the charcoal beneath her nails is unbecoming, as is the idea that she would choose her own company over Arnaud’s or George’s, or any man who might have her.”

— V.E. Schwab

359. “There, at the end, when Peter sits on the rock, the memory of Wendy Darling sliding from his mind, and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.”

— V.E. Schwab

360. “It was a voice like a shadow in the woods at night. Quiet and dark and cold.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

362. “But here is the danger of a place like Villon. Blink – and a year is gone. Blink – and five more follow. It is like a gap between stones, this village, just wide enough for things to get lost. The kind of place where time slips and blurs, where a month, a year, a life can go missing. Where everyone is born and buried in the same ten-meter plot.”

— V.E. Schwab

363. “Muriel Strauss, who at twenty-four only ever talks about the world in terms of conceptual authenticity and creative truth, who’s been a darling of the New York art scene since her first semester at Tisch, where she quickly realized she was better at critiquing art than creating it.”

— V.E. Schwab

364. “Well, when you wonder something,” said Eli, “doesn’t that mean part of you wants to believe in it? I think we want to prove things, in life, more than we want to disprove them. We want to believe.”

— V.E. Schwab

365. “Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. 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

366. “She said no, and learned how much the word was worth.”

— V.E. Schwab

367. “This is how change happens. Not with a whisper and a wish like in those tales of yours, but with a well-executed plan – and, yes, a bit of blood, but that’s the way of the world, isn’t it?”

— V.E. Schwab

368. “You know so little of war. Battles may be fought from the outside in, but wars are won from the inside out... Kingdoms and crowns are taken from within. The strongest fortress can withstand any attack from beyond its walls, and yet even it is not fortified against an attack from behind them.”

— V.E. Schwab

369. “You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

373. “It was never this quiet when you were here. Isn’t that funny? How much sound a body makes. I hate the silence, hate the fact that I’m the only one making noise. I make so much of it, as if I can trick myself into thinking you’re here, just out of sight.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

375. “The time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

377. “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

378. “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

379. “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

380. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

382. “Victor had never been good, or sweet – he’d always had a sharp edge; Eli had been drawn to the metallic glint of it –.”

— V.E. Schwab

383. “But what is safe? Tombs are safe. Merilance was safe. Safe does not mean happy, does not mean well, does not mean kind.”

— V.E. Schwab

384. “She breathes life into him with every line. And with every stroke, coaxes out another story.”

— V.E. Schwab

385. “Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps – perhaps – they are in reach.”

— V.E. Schwab

386. “Hate was too simple a word. He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention.”

— V.E. Schwab

387. “That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so... happy. 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 photo’s are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

390. “Food is one of the best things about being alive. Not just food. Good food.”

— V.E. Schwab

391. “Glass bites into her hand, and the pain is sharp, and real, the sudden scald of a burn without the lasting scar, and she does not care. In moments her cuts have already closed. The glasses and bottle lie whole. Once she thought it was a blessing, this inability to break, but now, the impotence is maddening.”

— V.E. Schwab

392. “Because you don’t think I’m a bad person, he said. And I don’t want to prove you wrong.”

— V.E. Schwab

393. “It is easier to be alone among so many people.”

— V.E. Schwab

394. “Grey for the magic-less city. Red, for the healthy empire. White, for the starving world.”

— V.E. Schwab

395. “Only you would arrive early to your own death.”

— V.E. Schwab

396. “I would see you again,” he says, “in daylight, or in darkness. As a woman, or a man. Please, let me see you again.”

— V.E. Schwab

397. “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

398. “Eli’s face slowly, slowly, began to open, and Victor felt his chest loosen with relief as Eli’s darker self peeked through.”

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab