Maggie Stiefvater

“Good morning. You have a moment?"It's clever the way she says it, not as a question. I would have to contradict her in order to have my moment back. I make a note to use the method in the future.”

“I think-I need to ask an embarrassing question. Do you think I could borrow a pair of scrubs? I-uh-my pants-""Oh!" Cried the poor nurse. "Yes. Absolutely. I'll be right back."[...]"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll just change here. He's not looking at anything at the moment." I gestured toward Sam, who was looking convincingly sedated. The nurse vanished through the curtains. Sam eye's flashed open again, distinctly amused.He whispered, "Did you just tell that man you went potty on yourself?""You.Shut.UP." I hissed back furiously.”

“Mum once told Dad that vices are only vices when looked at through the frame of society.”

“I might never ride Corr again.I don't know who I am without him.”

“Does anyone ask you why you stay, Sean Kendrick?""They do.""And why do you?""The sky and the sand and the sea and Corr.”

“Tell me what to wish for." Tell me what to ask the sea for.""To be happy. Happiness.""I don't think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don't know how you would keep it.""You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn't that what you said?""That's what I said. What do I need to hear?""That tomorrow we'll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I'll save the house and you'll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner.""That's what I needed to hear.”

“I didn't say I would start a yard." "You didn't have to. I'll come back next year and you'll have a nest of horses outside your window and Puck Connolly in your bed and I'll buy from you instead of Malvern. That's your future for you.”

“She could've looked at the tiny miracles in front of her: my feet, my hands, my fingers, the shape of my shoulders beneath my jacket, my human body, but she only stared at my eyes. The wind whipped again, through the trees, but it had no force, no power over me. The cold bit at my fingers, but they stayed fingers."Grace,"I said, very softly. "Say something.""Sam," She said, and I crushed her to me.”

“Did you just tell that man you went potty on yourself?""You. Shut. Up,"I hissed back furiously and chucked the scrubs at his head. "Hurry up before they find out I didn't wet myself. You seriously owe me.”

“Could others hold him?"His face remains the same. "There are no others. You're the only one."I swallow. "I can hold him.”

“I mean, we don’t have to worry about it until winter, anyway,” she said. “I was just wondering if you felt cured.”I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t feel cured. I felt like what Cole said —almost cured. A war survivor with a phantom limb. I still felt that wolf that I’d been: living in my cells, sleeping uneasily, waiting to be coaxed out by weather or a rush of adrenaline or a needle in my veins. I didn’t know if that was real or suggested. I didn’t know if one day I would feel secure in my skin, taking my human body for granted.“You look cured,” Grace said. Just her face was visible at the end of the shower curtain, looking in at me. She grinned and I yelled. Grace reached in just far enough to shut off the tap.“I’m afraid,” she said, whipping the shower curtain open all the way and presenting me with my towel, “this is the sort of thing you’ll have to put up with in your old age.” I stood there, dripping, feeling utterly ridiculous, Grace standing opposite, smiling with her challenge. There was nothing for it but to get over the awkwardness. Instead of taking the towel, I took her chin with my wet fingers and kissed her. Water from my hair ran down my cheeks and onto our lips. I was getting her shirt all wet, but she didn’t seem to mind. A lifetime of this seemed rather appealing. I said gallantly, “That better be a promise.”

“I gave her a look. “Rachel.”“Grace, you have to admit this is pretty weird. Say it. You disappearing from the hospital and Olivia is — and Sam suddenly shows up with you and, well, the freaky hallucinogenic mushrooms are looking more and more realistic, especially when you start talking about wolves. Because next step is for Isabel Culpeper to show up saying that everybody’s going to be abducted by aliens and I have to tell you,I can’t take that in my fragile emotional state. I think that —”I sighed. “Rachel.”“Fine,” she said. She threw her bag in the backseat and climbed in after.”

“It matters, like this: I belong to Malvern, you don't.”

“I am so, so alive.”

“Are there any other missing persons living under your roof? Elvis? Jimmy Hoffa? Amelia Earhart? I'd just like full disclosure now, before we go any further.”

“What do you mean? Grace Brisbane, you do not mean that you're not going back home again. Tell me that this was just because you were momentarily angry at them for grounding you. Or even tell me it's because you could not live without The Boy's stunning Boyfruits for another night. But don't tell me you think it's forever!”

“If the waitress comes, order me a coffee and something that involves bacon.”

“I remembered the pain as clearly as if I were shifting — the pain of loss. I felt the agony of the single moment that I lost myself. Lost what made me Sam. The part of me that could remember Grace's name.”

“Sharing revelations is easier when it doesn't matter.”

“No, you have to talk first. You wanted to talk. It means you say something and I respond and you talk back again. It's one of the human race's most shining achievements. It's called a conversation.”

“Kissing in front of the loveless is an act of cruelty.”

“Nekada davno spremno bih iskoristila tako rijetku priliku sklupcati se uz mamu na kaucu. Ali sada mi se cinilo da je malo prekasno za to. Netko drugi me cekao.”

“Once upon a time I would’ve leaped at the rare opportunity of curling up with Mom on the couch. But now it sort of felt like too little too late. I had someone else waiting for me.”

“With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.”

“I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.”

“Sam handed me my hot chocolate and didn't answer. But his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively - I wondered if he realized the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.”

“I want you." Feeling the grip of his hand in mine, the brush of skin on mine, seeing the way he moved in front of me, equal parts human and wolf, and remembering his smell - I ached with wanting to kiss him.”

“I couldn't think of anything to say. I was idiotically entranced by the way he said "Grace." The tone of it. The way his lips formed the vowels. The timbre of his voice stuck in my head like music.”

“I lost a horse today.''That sounds careless. What happened?''She jumped off a cliff.''A cliff! Is that normal?”

“You made this?'Finn looks at me. 'No, Saint Anthony brought it to me in the night. He was very put out I didn't give it to you right then.”

“I whisper like the sea in the horse's ear.”

“Make sure the seaweed lies flat.''Okay.''Leave an inch below the knee.''Okay.''It's got to be loose enough to put a finger in the top.''Sean Kendrick.' I say it emphatically enough that the stallion's ears prick toward me. (...)Sean doesn't appear to be at all apologetic. 'I think you'd better let me do that after all.''You're the one who had me in here in the first place.' I say. 'Now I think it's you who doesn't trust me.''It's not just you,' He replies.I glower at him. 'Well, I'll tell you what. I'll hold him and you wrap. That way, when it's done wrong, there's only yourself to slap. And take your jacket. I'm tired of holding it.”

“Many, many readers have written asking me wistfully about the nature of Sam and Grace's relationship, and I can assure you, that sort is absolutely real. Mutual, respectful, enduring love is completely attainable as long as you swear you won't settle for less.”

“I'm pleased to see that the cab is cluttered with cough drop wrappers and empty milk bottles and bits of mud-smeared newspapers made brittle by age. Neatness makes me feel like I have to be on my best behavior. Clutter is my natural habitat.”

“Cole," I breathed, "what have you done to yourself?"The wolf's head jerked back toward its shoulders, again and again. Cole sang from the speakers, his voice slow and uncertain against a sparse backing of just piano, a different Cole than I'd ever heard:If I am Hannibalwhere are my Alps?”

“One/Or the Other was about the Cole that I heard in the monitors on stage versus the Cole that paced the hotel halls at night. This was what One/Or the Other was: It was the knowledge that I was surrounded by adults with lives that I could never imagine living. It was the humming noise inside me that told me to do something and found nothing to do that meant anything, the bit of me that was like a fly smashing itself again and again on a windowpane. It was the futility of aging. It was a piano piece gotten right the first tie. It was the time I picked Angie up for a date and she was wearing a cardigan that made her look like her mother. It was roads that ended in cul-de-sacs and careers that ended with desks and songs screamed in a gymnasium at night. It was the realization that this was life, and I didn't belong here.”

“everytime i saw him it was like another jolt”

“holding tight, denying the fact that eventually we all had to let go.”

“I can't tell the difference," I said. "Between not fighting and giving up.”

“You're getting your weird all over me.”

“Sam, I really want to buy a red coffee pot, if they exist," Grace said."I'll find you one”

“Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry almost to sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy”

“Your hair is all funky in the morning.”

“They bit you. You should've changed, too, you know.""Sometimes I wish I had," I told him.He closed his eyes, miles away on the other side of the bed. "Sometimes I do, too.”

“There are moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you'll remember for the rest of your life, and it's not often they turn out to be the same moment.”

“whoopdie-friggin-doo, fooled you!”

“You leave nothing to assumption," Dory Maud says. "You swallow her with your eyes. I'm surprised there's any of her left for the rest of us to see.”

“And I told you before, I'll sell you any of the thoroughbreds.”“I didn't make any of those thoroughbreds. I didn't make them what they are.”“You made all of them what they are.”I don't look at him. “None of them made me who I am.”

“Thanks,” I say, and Finn looks uncomfortable. Mum used to say he was like a faerie; he didn't like to be thanked. I add, “Sorry.”

“One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing. I could stare at the stars for hours, their infinite number and depth pulling me into a part of myself that I ignored during the day.”