The Raven King Quotes

“The head is too wise. The heart is all fire.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me," Gansey said. "Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don't want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don't want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. Why?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“To think you could have been dreaming the cure for cancer," Blue said. "Look, Sargent," Ronan retorted, "I was gonna dream you some eye cream last night since clearly modern medicine's doing jack shit for you, but I nearly had my ass handed to me by a death snake from the fourth circle of dream hell, so you're welcome."
Blue was appropriately touched. "Ah, thanks, man."
"No problem, bro.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, 'You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.'
Gansey died.
'Goodbye,' Noah said. 'Don't throw it away.'
He quietly slid from time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“And here was Ronan, like a heart attack that never stopped.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Are you going to lock your shitbox?"
Adam said, "No point. Hooligans got in anyway."
The hooligan in question smiled thinly.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: that was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Depending on where you began the story, it was about Noah Czerny.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“She felt one thousand years old. She also felt like maybe she was a condescending brat. She wanted her bike. She wanted her friends, who were also one-thousand-year-old condescending brats. She wanted to live in a world where she was surrounded by one-thousand-year-old condescending brats.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It'll be OK. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Dreamers are to be classified as weapons.
Ronan already knew he was a weapon ; but he was trying to make up for it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I take it we're friends now," Henry said.
"We must be," Gansey replied. "Jane says it should be so."
"It should be so," Blue agreed.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Now Blue looked promptly judgmental, which was about two ticks off from her ordinary expression and one tick off from Ronan's.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he's seen. What a frightened monster she was.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It was 6:21.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Why don't you like girls?"
Nicky looked startled by the interruption, but he rallied quickly and made a face. "They're so soft."
Neil thought about Renee's bruised knuckles, Dan's fierce spirit, and Allison holding her ground on the court a week after Seth's death. He thought about his mother standing unflinching in the face of his father's violent anger and her ruthlessly leaving bodies in their wake. He felt compelled to say, "Some of the strongest people I've known are women."
"What? Oh, no," Nicky hurried to say. "I mean literally soft. Too many curves, see? I feel like my hands would slide right off. It's totally not my thing. I like…" He drew a box with his fingers as he searched for words. "Erik. Erik's perfect. He's a total outdoors junkie, rock climbing and hiking and mountain biking, all that awful bug-infested fresh-air stuff. But oh my god, you should see what it does to his body. He's like this, all hard edges." He drew another box. "He's stronger than I am, and I like that. I feel like I could lean on him all day and he wouldn't break a sweat.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“If Glendower had not saved Gansey's life, he did not know who to thank, or who to be, or how to live.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“and Gansey, hearing the longing in her voice like he was being undone, like his own feelings were being unbearably mirrored.
I can't come? Gansey asked.
Yes, you can meet us there in a fancy plane, Henry said.
Don't be fooled by his nice hair, Blue interjected, Gansey would hike.
And warmth filled the empty caverns in Gansey's heart. He felt known.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all palm against palm against palm, thumb crossed over thumb, fingers pressed into wrist bone--and then Adam was facing him and he released his hand.

The ocean burned.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: this was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.

"It has to happen now," he said. "I have to do the sacrifice now."

Now that the moment had come, there was a certain glory to it. He didn't want to die, but at least he was doing it for these people, his found family. At least he was doing it for people who he knew were going to really live. At least he was not dying pointlessly, stung by wasps. At least this time it would matter.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Gansey felt the feeling of time slipping--one last time. The sense of having done this before. He gently laid the backs of his hands on her cheeks. He whispered, "It'll be okay. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me."

The rain splatted about them, kicking up splashes of red-black, making the petals around them twitch. Dream things from Ronan's newly healed imagination piled around their feet. In the rain, everything smelled of these mountains in fall: oak leaves and hay fields, ozone and dirt turned over. It was beautiful here, and Gansey loved it. It had taken a long time, but he'd ended up where he wanted after all.

Blue kissed him.

He had dreamt of it often enough, and here it was, willed into life. In another world, it would just be this: a girl softly pressing her lips to a boy's. But in this one, Gansey felt the effects of it at once. Blue, a mirror, an amplifier, a strange half-tree soul with ley line magic running through her. And Gansey, restored once by the ley line's power, given a ley line heart, another kind of mirror. And when they were pointed at each other, the weaker one gave.

Gansey's ley line heart had been gifted, not grown.

He pulled back from her.

Out loud, with intention, with the voice that left no room for doubt, he said, "Let it be to kill the demon."

Right after he spoke, Blue threw her arms tightly around his neck. Right after he spoke, she pressed her face into the side of his. Right after he spoke, she held him like a shouted word. Love, love, love.

He fell quietly from her arms.

He was a king.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“He didn't always remember why he was doing this, but he remembered what he was doing: looking for the first time Gansey had died.

He couldn't remember the first time he'd made this choice. It was hard, now, to remember what was remembering and what was actually repeating. He wasn't even certain now which he was doing.

Noah just knew he had to keep doing it until the moment. He only had to stay solid long enough to make sure it stuck.

Here he was: Gansey, so young, twitching and dying in the leaves of a wood at the same time that Noah, miles away, had been twitching and dying in the leaves of a different wood.

All times were the same. As soon as Noah died, his spirit, full of the ley line, favored by Cabeswater, had felt spread over every moment he had experienced and was going to experience. It was easy to look wise when time was a circle.

Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, "You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not."

Gansey died.

"Good-bye," Noah said. "Don't throw it away."

He quietly slid from time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Humans were such tricky and complicated things.

As it began to spin life and being out of its dreamstuff, the remaining trees began to hum and sing together. Once upon a time, their songs had sounded different, but in this time, they sang the songs the Greywaren had given to them. It was a wailing, ascending tune, full of both misery and joy at once. And as Cabeswater distilled its magic, these trees began to fall, one by one.

The psychic's daughter's sadness burst through the forest, and Cabeswater accepted that, too, and put it into the life it was building.

Another tree fell, and another, and Cabeswater kept returning again and again to the humans who had made the request. It had to remember what they felt like. It had to remember to make itself small enough.

As the forest diminished, the Greywaren's despair and wonder surged through Cabeswater. The trees sang soothingly back to him, a song of possibility and power and dreams, and then Cabeswater collected his wonder and put it into the life it was building.

And finally, the magician's wistful regret twisted through what remained of the trees. Without this, what was he? Simply human, human, human. Cabewaster pressed leaves against his cheek one last time, and then they took that humanity for the life it was building.

It was nearly human-shaped. It would fit well enough. Nothing was ever perfect.

Make way for the Raven King.

The last tree fell, and the forest was gone, and everything was absolutely silent.

Blue touched Gansey's face. She whispered, "Wake up.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I want you to give me a straight answer," Declan said. "Are you even thinking about going to college?"

"No." It was satisfying and terrible to say it out loud, a trigger pulled, the explosion over within a second. Ronan looked around for bodies.

Declan swayed; the bullet had clearly at least grazed him near a vital organ. With effort, he got the arterial spray under control. "Yeah, I figured. So the endgame is making this a career for you, isn't it?"

This was not, in fact, what Ronan wanted. Although he wanted to be free to dream, and free to live at the Barns, he did not want to dream in order to be able to live at the Barns. He wanted to be left alone to repair all of the buildings, to raise his father's cattle from their supernatural sleep, to populate the fields with new animals to be eaten and sold, and to turn the very rearmost field into a giant mudslick suitable for driving cars around in circles. This, to Ronan, represented a romantic ideal that he would do much to achieve. He wasn't sure how to tell his brother this in a persuasive, unembarrassing way, though, so he'd said, in an unfriendly way, "I was actually thinkin' of being a farmer."

"Ronan, for fuck's sake," Declan said. "Can we have a serious conversation for once?"

Ronan flipped him the bird with swift proficiency.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam.

Once, when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the scraggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy gray sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain traveling across the vast dry field toward him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding on the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.

That was this kiss.

They kissed again. Adam felt it in more than his lips.

Ronan sat back, his eyes closed, swallowing. Adam watched his chest rise and fall, his eyebrows furrow. He felt as bright and dreamy and imaginary as the light through the window.

He did not understand anything.

It was a long moment before Ronan opened his eyes, and when he did, his expression was complicated. He stood up. He was still looking at Adam, and Adam was looking back, but neither said anything. Probably Ronan wanted something from him, but Adam didn't know what to say. He was a magician, Persephone had said, and his magic was making connections between disparate things. Only now he was too full of white, fuzzy light to make any sort of logical connections. He knew that of all the options in the world, Ronan Lynch was the most difficult version of any of them. He knew that Ronan was not a thing to be experimented with. He knew his mouth still felt warm. He knew that he had started his entire time at Aglionby certain all he wanted to do was get as far away from this state and everything in it as possible.

He was pretty sure he had just been Ronan's first kiss.

"I'm gonna go downstairs," Ronan said.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It was impossible to believe that Adam had thought that the previous moment was the worst.

This was the worst: being blindfolded and tied in the back of a car and knowing that the soft, gasping sound was Ronan Lynch choking for breath every time he waded back to consciousness.

So much of Ronan was bravado, and there was none left.

And Adam was nothing but a weapon to kill him faster.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“She kept hollering until Ronan had caught up with her. Sure enough, she had found something out of place. He kicked through the leaves. It was a metal artifact that looked centuries old. It was the wheel of a 1973 Camaro. It matched the ancient, impossible wheel they'd found on the ley line months earlier. Back then, Ronan had taken that to mean that at some point in the future, they would wreck the Camaro in the pursuit of Glendower, and the ley line's bending of time would have sent them back in time and then forward again. All times being the same-ish on the ley line.

But it looked as if they hadn't gotten to that place yet: They had future adventures waiting for them on the ley line.

It was a thrilling and terrifying prospect.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Adam's hands had stopped jerking as the demon realized they were well secured. His head rested miserably on Ronan's shoulder, everything shaking, standing only because Ronan did not allow him to sink.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King