The Raven Boys Quotes

“If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“I guess now would be a good time to tell you," He said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Excelsior," Gansey said bleakly.
Blue asked, "What does that even mean?"
Gansey looked over his shoulder at her. He was once more, just a little bit closer to the boy she'd seen in the churchyard.
"Onward and upward.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“But what [Gansey] said was, "I'm going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn't just for Blue, either. All of us."
Ronan said, "I'm always straight."
Adam replied, "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told."
Blue said, "Okay.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“If it had a social security number, Ronan had fought with it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Ronan did not smoke; he preferred his habits with hangovers.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Ronan, taking in Blue’s posture and Gansey below, observed, “If you spit, Blue, it would land right in his eye.”
Gansey moved to the opposite side of the bed with surprising swiftness, glancing at Adam and away again as quickly.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“You look like a super villain with your familiar," Adam said.
Ronan’s smile cut his face, but he looked kinder than Blue had ever seen him, like the raven in his hand was his heart, finally laid bare.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Ostendes tuum et ostendam meus?”
― Maggie Stiefvater

“Even though Ronan was snarling and Noah was sighing and Adam was hesitating, he didn’t turn to verify that they were coming. He knew they were. In three different ways, he’d earned them all days or weeks or months before, and when it came to it, they’d all follow him anywhere.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“MURDERED The writing continued until the driver's side glass was clear, entirely swept clean by an invisible finger, until there were so many words that none of them could be read. Until it was only a window into an empty car with the memory of a burger on the passenger seat. 'Noah,' Gansey said, 'I'm so sorry.' Blue wiped away a tear. 'Me too.' Stepping forward, leaning over the hood of the car, Ronan pressed his fingers to the windshield, and while they watched, he wrote: REMEMBERED.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want another.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“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.”
― Maggie Stiefvater

“Adam had taken the cassette from Ronan's hand, working Ronan's fingers loose and putting his own fingers between them. For a moment, Opal hidden, had thought they were going to kiss. But instead, Ronan pressed his face against Adam's neck and Adam quietly put his head on top of Ronan's head and they did not move for a long time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Opal

“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

“Adam Parrish.

This was how it had begun: Ronan Lynch had been in the passenger seat of Richard Campbell Gansey III's bright orange '73 Camaro, hanging out the window because walls couldn't hold him. Little historic Henrietta, Virginia, curled close, trees and streetlights alike leaning in as if to catch the conversation down below. What a pair the two of them were. Gansey, searching desperately for meaning. Ronan, sure that he wouldn't find any. Voted most and least likely to succeed, respectively, at Aglionby Academy, their shared high school. Those days, Gansey was the hunter and Ronan the hawkish best friend kept hooded and belled to prevent him tearing himself to shreds with his own talons.

This was how it had begun: a student walking his bike up the last hill into town, clearly headed the same place they were. He wore the Aglionby uniform, although as they grew closer Ronan saw it was threadbare in a way school uniforms couldnt manage in a single year's use--secondhand. His sleeves were pushed up and his forearms were wiry, the thin muscles picked out in stark relief. Ronan's attention stuck on his hands. Lovely boyish hands with prominent knuckles, gaunt and long like his unfamiliar face.

"Who's that?" Gansey had asked, and Ronan hadn't answered, just kept hanging out the window. As they passed, Adam's expression was all contradictions: intense and wary, resigned and resilient, defeated and defiant.

Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God:

Please.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Ronan Lynch was becoming a jagged, shaggy horror of a thing. She could feel the same wordless dread that the Lace invoked rising in her.

Hennessy hugged him.

She didn't even know where the impulse came from. She was not a sentimental hugger. She had not been hugged as a child, unless the hug was being emotionally weaponized for later. And Ronan Lynch did not seem like the sort of person who would care about getting a hug. Giving someone care and receiving it were two unrelated actions.

At first it did not seem to do anything.

Ronan kept screaming. The hug had not made him appear more human. He seemed more like Bryde than ever--and not Bryde when he was his most man-shaped. He just seemed like a dream entity that hated everything.

"Ronan Lynch, you asshole," Hennessy said.

Once, he'd hugged her. At the time, she had thought it didn't help, but she'd been wrong.

So she held on now, and kept holding on, though he became even less recognizable as Ronan Lynch for a little bit. Then, after a while, the scream gave way to quiet.

She could feel his body quivering. Like a pencil sketch, it conveyed misery with the smallest of gestures.

And then there was nothing at all, just stillness.

Finally, she realized he was hugging her, too, tightly.

There was a strange sort of magic to being a person holding another person after not being held by someone for a long time. There was another strange sort of magic to understand you'd been using words and silence the wrong way for a long time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“How badly Declan wanted it. How badly he wanted to trust that someone else would make sure the world didn't burn down without him. How badly he wanted to be a son again, a kid again, to let someone else carry this. Carry him.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“On the seventh day, the Lynch brothers discovered they were friends once more.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Slowly, Ronan Lynch sputtered to movement, trying to sit up even before his body was fully willing, scrambling, his voice disbelieving: "Adam?"

Adam, who had been sitting quietly all this time beside Ronan, grinned weakly as Ronan seized him around the neck in a crushing, desperate hug. Hennessy and Jordan watched the two of them kneeling in the grass, just clinging to each other. It was an enormous, extraordinary moment, surrounded by mundane, ordinary things.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Quite suddenly Ronan was cross with both voices. He was cross with himself. Both sides telling him what he was, and him believing it. How long had he been asking: Tell me what I am?

Never once had he simply decided for himself.

It wasn't a choice at all.

He woke up.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan’s bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey had first met him. “Is Noah out here?”

“Hold on,” Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: “Why would he be?”

“No reason. Just no reason.” Ronan slammed his door.

Gansey asked Adam, “Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?”

Adam’s response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, “He threw me out the window!”

Ronan’s voice sang out from behind his closed door: “You’re already dead!”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Declan had a feeling like there was a version of himself that might never take another step off this sidewalk. That might just stand here forever until his heart stopped beating, however long that took.

But instead he squared his shoulders. He took a breath. He felt empty.

He texted Jordan: you were the story I chose for myself.

Then he walked back into the hotel.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Richard Campbell Gansey III, Ronan's oldest friend, was in the country for the wedding, and so was Blue Sargent. They had just graduated from the same sociology program with two very different concentrations. Both of them were very excited to talk about what they had studied to anyone who would listen, but no one except for each other was very excited to hear about it. Some something trenches something something artifacts something something secret doors something something trees something something primary sources.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan Lynch was becoming a jagged, shaggy horror of a thing. She could feel the same wordless dread that the Lace invoked rising in her.

Hennessy hugged him.

She didn't even know where the impulse came from. She was not a sentimental hugger. She had not been hugged as a child, unless the hug was being emotionally weaponized for later. And Ronan Lynch did not seem like the sort of person who would care about getting a hug. Giving someone care and receiving it were two unrelated actions.

At first it did not seem to do anything.

Ronan kept screaming. The hug had not made him appear more human. He seemed more like Bryde than ever--and not Bryde when he was his most man-shaped. He just seemed like a dream entity that hated everything.

"Ronan Lynch, you asshole," Hennessy said.

Once, he'd hugged her. At the time, she had thought it didn't help, but she'd been wrong.

So she held on now, and kept holding on, though he became even less recognizable as Ronan Lynch for a little bit. Then, after a while, the scream gave way to quiet.

She could feel his body quivering. Like a pencil sketch, it conveyed misery with the smallest of gestures.

And then there was nothing at all, just stillness.

Finally, she realized he was hugging her, too, tightly.

There was a strange sort of magic to being a person holding another person after not being held by someone for a long time. There was another strange sort of magic to understanding you'd been using words and silence the wrong way for a long time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“And finally, after nearly everyone had gone to bed, Ronan and Adam lay on their backs on one of the roofs and watched the stars get brighter. Without taking his eyes off the sky, Ronan reached out his hand to Adam to offer him something. It was a ring. Without taking his eyes off the sky, Adam took it and put it on.

They sighed. The stars moved overheard. The world felt enormous, both past and future, with their slender present hovering in the middle.

It was all very good.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan couldn't do anything. He couldn't do anything at all.

Wake up, Ronan thought, wake up, wake up. But his body didn't move a muscle.

Adam gathered up Chainsaw, much to her protests, and tucked her back inside his jacket. He gathered up the lantern.

Tamquam, Ronan thought, furious that Adam was upset, euphoric that he'd come back. It hadn't been that long before this he'd been wanting to know what emotions felt like, and now he had all of them at once.

Just before the door closed behind him, Adam said to the dark, "Alter idem.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“Ronan’s expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t condone them; he couldn’t understand them.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys