Maggie Stiefvater

“I was born with these eyes. I was born for this life.”

“The fact was, I didn't know if I was built for happy endings.”

“I remember being intrigued by the idea of school-in-a-box, just-add-water-and-Sam.”

“Creative""Dangerously emo.”

“Was soll ich mit meinem Munde? Mit meiner Nacht?Mit meinem Tag? Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus, keine Stelle auf der ich lebe.’'What should I do with my mouth? With my night? With my day? I have no lover, no house, no place where I live. ”

“This is Rilke. I wish I had written it for you.”

“I wasn’t sure if I was charmed by his reluctance to share a bed with a girl or insulted that, apparently, I wasn’t hot enough for him to charge the mattress like a bull.”

“She was past present future. I wanted to answer, but I was broken.”

“My hand aching because grace wasn't underneath it 3!”

“I smiled sweetly at his embarressment, beginning to walk again, kicking up golden leaves. I heard him scuffling leaves behind me. "And what was the point of this again?" Forget it!" Sam said. "Do you you like this place or not?"I stoped in my tracks, spinning to face him. "Hey." I pointed at him; he raised his eyebrows and stopped in his tracks. "You didn't think Jack would be here at all, did you?"His thick black eyebrows went up even farther. Did you evan intend to look for him at all?"He held his hands up as if a surrender. "What do you want me to say?"You were trying to see if I would reconize it, wern't you?" I took anouther step, colsing the distance between us. I could feel the heat of his body, even without touching him, in the increasing cold of the day. "YOU told me about this wood somehow. How did you show it to me?"I keep trying to tell you. You wont listen. Because you're stubbon. It's how we speek- it's the only words we have. Just pictures. Just simple little picters. You HAVE changed Grace. Just not your skin. I want you to believe me." His hands were still raise, but he was starting to grin at me in the failing light.So you brought me here to see this." I stepped forward again, and he stepped back.Do you like it?"Under false pretence." Anouther step forward; anouther back. The grine widenedSo do you like it?"When you knew we wouldn't come across anybody else."His teeth flashed in his grin. "Do you like it?"I punched my hands into his chest. "You know I love it. You knew I would." I went to punch him, and he grabed my wrists. For a moment we stood there like that, him looking down at me with a grin half-caught on his face, and me lookingup at him: Still Life with Boy and Girl. It would've been the perfect moment to kiss me, but he didn't. He just looked at me and looked at me, and by the time I relizeed I could just as easily kiss him, I noticed that his grin was slipping away. Sam slowly lowered my wrists and relesed them. "I'm glad." he said very quietly.My arms still hung by my sides, right where Sam had put them. I frowned at him. "You were supposed to kiss me."I thought about it."I just kept looking at the soft, sad shape of his lips, looking just like his voice sounded. I was probably staring, but I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted him to kiss me and how stupide it was to want it so badly. "Why don't you?" He leaned over and gave mr the lightest of kisses. His lips, cool and dry, ever so polite and incredibly maddening. "I have to get inside soon," he whispered "It's getting cold”

“Sam laughed, a funny, self-deprecating laugh. "You did read a lot. And spent too much time just inside the kitchen window, where I couldn't see you very well.""And not enough time mostly naked in front of my bedroom window?" I teased. Sam turned bright red. "That," he said, "is so not the point of this conversation.”

“After you were bitten, I knew what would happen. I waited for you to change, every night, so I could bring you back and keep you from getting hurt." A chilly gust of wind lifter his hair and sent a shower of golden leaves glimmering down around him. He spred out his arms, letting them fall into his hands. He looked like a dark angel in an eternal autumn wood. "Did you know you get one happy day for everyone you catch?"I didn't know what he meant, even after he opened his fist to show me the quivering leaves crumpled in his palm.One happy day for every falling leaf you catch." Sam's voice was low.I watched the egdes of the leaves slowly unfold, fluttering in the breeze."How long did you wait?"It would have been romantic if hr'd had the courage to look into my face to say it, but instead, he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his boots in the leaves- countless possibilities for happy days- on the ground. "I haven't stopped."And I should've said something romantic too, but i didn't have the courage, either. So instead, I watched the shy way he was chewing his lip and studying the leaves, and said, "That must've been very borring.”

“I laughed, loud enough that Delia looked up at me. She made motions for me to come over, but I pretended to be looking past her into the food tent. "Hurry. Pretend you're pointing something out so I can pretend not to see her." Luke put a hand on my shoulder and pointed with the other towards the sky. "Look, the moon." "That was the best you could come up with?" I demanded.”

“you just can't wait to get out of your head, can you?""if you were in here you might want that too.”

“and i am a boy waiting-for the heat and fruitfulness of summer,waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl”

“I sat on the hill, the wind whispering through the long grass that surrounded me. I stared at the stars and wanted more than what I was and more than what the world was and just - wanted.”

“look, getting bitten doesn't make you into a monster. It just makes you a wolf. You are what you are. When you're a wolf, or when you're shifting, you don't have human inhibitions, so if you're naturally angry or violent, you get worse.”

“I felt like I was watching the transfomation of two people: Victor to wolf, and Cole to someone else. I was the only one here, staying the same.”

“I tired the back door -- unlocked.Truley the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me.”

“One happy day for every falling leaf you catch. Sam's voice was low.”

“When did you get so smart?"He tapped his forehead. "Brain transplant. They put in a whale's. I'm passing all my classes with my eyes closed now, but I just can't get over this craving for krill." He shrugged. "And I feel sorry for the whale that got my brain. Probably swimming around Florida now trying to catch glimpses of girls in bikinis.”

“When he kissed me, his lips soft and careful, it was all the thrill of our first kiss and all the practiced familiarity of the accumulated memory of all our kisses.”

“It felt wrong to be so proud of something that I had absolutely nothing to do with, but I couldn't help myself.”

“His lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever.”

“Interesting choice," Sullivan said. He slid his gaze over to Paul, who was drumming his fingers on the table in a manic, caffeine-inspired way and blinking a lot. Paul wasn't out-and-out singing along with the king of the dead, but he might as well have put out a big neon sign saying "How's My Driving? Ask Me About My Nerves: 1-800-WIG-N-OUT." --James”

“We dance, we dance. You hold the thread of my soul. You spin, you spin. And you unravel the part from the whole. We laugh, we laugh. I'm so far from where I began. I fall, I fall. And I forget that I am.-from Golden Tongue:The Poems of Steven Slaughter”

“You needn't tell a bird it's a bird. Or remind a fish of its purpose. It's only us who lose our way. We have names because we must. - from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter”

“Some words have multiple meanings. Scholastic, aware that I'm allergic to preservatives, kindly got someone to translate the phrase "I can only eat food without preservatives" into Italian. They warned me, however, as they taught me how to say it, that the Italian word for "preservatives" is the same as the word for "condom." So that I should be careful how I look when I say it.”

“Mercy Falls was all about rumors, and the rumor on Jack was that he got his short fuse from his dad. I didn't know about that. It seemed like you ought to pick the sort of person you would be, no matter what your parents were like.”

“It was as if I had thought all along I was a complete picture, and Sam hadrevealed that I was a puzzle, and had taken me apart into pieces and put me back togetheragain. I was acutely aware of each distinct emotion, all fitting together tightly.”

“Nuala, can we just have, like, a cease-fire? I mean, you can go back to calling me an ass and trying to lure me to my death tomorrow and I'll go back to treating you like a psychotic bitch and researching ways to exorcise you in the morning, but seriously, can we just have a cease-fire for tonight?”

“There was another group of students already filing down the hall. College students. We looked like babies beside them. The college girls tossed their hair and giggled. hee hee hee, two years closer to minivans and soccer practices and Botox than the girls from my bus. I wished I hadn't come.”

“I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me.”

“It was the perfect moment to tell her. This is my last year. But I couldn’t say it. Not yet. I wanted another minute, another hour, another night of pretending this wasn’t the end.”

“That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.”

“Close your eyes,” he said. Without waiting for me, he pressed his hand over my eyelids, shutting them for me. I felt the love seat shift as he slid in beside me, heard the inexplicably loud sound of the cover opening, the pages inside scraping against each other as he turned them.Then I felt his breath on my ear as he said, voice barely audible, “‘I am alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I am lowly in this world, and yet not lowly enough for me to be just a thing to you, dark and shrewd. I want my will and I want to go with my will as it moves towards action.’” He paused, long, the only sound his breath, a little ragged, before he went on, “‘And I want, in those silent, somehow faltering times, to be with someone who knows, or else alone. I want to reflect everything about you, and I never want to be too blind or too ancient to keep your profound wavering image with me. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because there, where I’m folded, I am a lie.”

“She's the only thing that's make my life worth living and if that's all I get, a few months, a few days, it's more than I've ever hoped for. Do you really think God would forgive me for the blood on my hands, even if my soul was free? I'm going to hell no matter what happens. Let me have my pathetic hopeless love while I can. Just-- let me pretend it will turn out all right.”

“Grace reached over and began stroking her fingers through my hair. I closed my eyes and let her drive me crazy.”

“Some days seem to fit together like a stained glass window. A hundred little pieces of different color and mood that, when combined, create a complete picture.”

“And leaving you (there aren't words to untangle it)Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,so that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes understanding,Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star.”

“Again and Again, however, we know the language of love, and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the staggeringly secret abyss in which others find their end: again and again the two of us go out under the ancient trees, make our bed again and again between the flowers, face to face with the skies”

“I am alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I am lowly in this world, and yet not lowly enough for me to be just a thing to you, dark and shrewd. I want my will and I want to go with my will as it moves towards action. And I want, in those silent, somehow faltering times, to be with someone who knows, or else alone. I want to reflect everything about you, and I never want to be too blind or too ancient to keep your profound wavering image with me. I want to unfold. I don't want to be folded anywhere, because there, where I'm folded, I am a lie.”

“For a second, he was still, blinking. Then he shook off all the blankets and coats so that his arms were free and he wrapped them around me as tightly as he could. I felt him shuddering, shuddering against me as he buried his face in my hair. I said, uselessly, "Sam, don't go." Sam cupped my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes. His eyes were yellow, sad, wolf, mine. "These stay the same. Remember that when you look at me. Remember it's me. Please."" — Grace and Sam (Shiver)”

“...He kissed me again, farther up my neck, and I pushed him back against the wall.My mind searched for the logical thought, a rational life raft before I drowned in wanting to hiss him. I managed, "We've only met a few days ago. We don't know each other."Luke released me. "How long does it take to know someone?"I didn't know. "A month? A few months?" It sounded stupid to quantify it, especially when I didn't want to believe my own reasoning. But I couldn't just go kissing someone I knew nothing about-- it went against everything I'd ever been told. So why was it so hard to say no?He took my fingers, playing with them in between his own. "I'll wait." He looked so good in the half-light under the trees, his light eyes nearly glowing against his shadowed skin. It was useless."I don't want you to." I whispered the words, and before I'd even finished saying them, his mouth was on mine and I was melting under his lips.”

“She reached down and traced my eyebrows. 'You do have really beautiful eyes.''We get to keep them,' I said.Grace started at my voice. 'What?''It's the one thing we keep. Our eyes stay the same.' I unclenched my fists. 'I was born with these eyes. I was born for this life.”

“I gave Paul a withering look but the truth was I was curious as hell. First of all, to find out what Sullivan wanted. And second, to see what a teacher's room looked like. I'd always sort of figured they came out during the day to teach classes and then got stored in shoe boxes under someone's bed until they were needed again. (James)”

“No, Elenore's something else. You're beautiful. Especially when you look at me with that 'boy he's a condescending asshole' expression....Yea. Beautiful.”

“Go, go, magic clover.”

“Thery're both iron, isn't that funny?""Funny haha or funny strange?"James handed them back to me "Funny 'occult'""Ah. Funny strange"James looked at me sternly, "Don't start that. I'm supposed to be the humorous one”

“It's rude to stare, but the great thing about staring at a sedated person is that they don't know you're doing it.”