Top 500 V.E. Schwab Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “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

402. “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

403. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

406. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

417. “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

418. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

420. “You’re free to leave, if you have somewhere else to go. But if you go – and now and then, girls do – you will not be welcomed back. Once a year, sometimes more, a girl pounds at the door, desperate to get back in, and that is how the others learn that it’s well and good to dream of happy lives and welcome homes, but even a grim tombstone of a place is better than the street.”

— V.E. Schwab

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

427. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— V.E. Schwab

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

— V.E. Schwab

437. “Suddenly every word is full of weight, honesty is such a heavy thing.”

— V.E. Schwab

438. “Death comes for us all,” said Holland evenly. “I would simply have mine mean something.”

— V.E. Schwab

439. “Myths do not happen all at once. They do not spring forth whole into the world. They form slowly, rolled between the hands of time until their edges smooth, until the saying of the story gives enough weight to the words – to the memories – to keep them rolling on their own.”

— V.E. Schwab

440. “Henry Strauss wakes her with kisses.”

— V.E. Schwab

441. “They have bled together in her mind, those stories, become less a picture than a palette, a tone. Perhaps the city was less splendid. Perhaps there were shadows mixed in with the light.”

— V.E. Schwab

442. “It is so strange, to see her face reflected, distorted, echoed in so many others. Here is the line of her cheek and the curve of her mouth. Here is the angle of her eye and the slope of her nose. The details scattered like seeds across the portraits. She has never had a family, and now she has a tree.”

— V.E. Schwab

443. “Kell would say it was impossible. What a useless word, in a world with magic.”

— V.E. Schwab

444. “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

445. “Seeping in through his clothes and his skin until it was gone – or not gone. Absorbed.”

— V.E. Schwab

446. “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

447. “I belong wherever I choose.”

— V.E. Schwab

448. “It seemed like a good plan, or at least, like the best of several bad ones. But.”

— V.E. Schwab

449. “And she is laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he wants to wipe them away, but his hands are her hands, and she is drawing.”

— V.E. Schwab

450. “This is a dream. It would be so easy to climb inside, to stay until it felt real, to never wake up.”

— V.E. Schwab