I open the door wide to reveal the answer. They all look at Sean standing there with his hands in his pocket and the other hand around loaf of bread and it occurs to me all in a rush as they stare at him that Sean looks a little, just a little, like he's courting. I don't have time to explain the truth of it before Tommy laughs and jumps to his feet. "Sean Kendrick, the devil. How are you?
Maggie StiefvaterOne 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.
Maggie StiefvaterIf I only have ten minutes, Sam, this is what I want to say. You're not the best of us. You're more than that. You're better than all of us. If I only have ten minutes, I would tell you to go out there and live. I'd say...please take your guitar and sing your songs to as many people as you can. Please fold a thousand more of those damn birds of yours. Please kiss that girl a million times.
Maggie StiefvaterShe screamed, the high scream that was neither human nor animal but something terrible in between, the sort of sound that you never forget no matter how many beautiful things you hear afterward.
Maggie StiefvaterThe place smelled like Sam -- or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very ... erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.
Maggie StiefvaterIt occurred to me then that I was the opposite of my father. Because I was very, very good at destroying things.
Maggie StiefvaterThis new world was a vicious, sleek world made of street lights and tight jeans, sharp smiles and fast cars. This was a city, edited. A city, pared down to its bare minimums, beautiful and abusive.
Maggie StiefvaterPeppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry almost to sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy
Maggie StiefvaterGansey appeared beside Blue in the doorway. He shook his empty bottle at her. "Fair trade," he told her in a way that indicated he had selected a fair-trade coffee beverage entirely so that he could tell Blue that he had selected a fair-trade coffee beverage so that she could tell him well done with your carbon footprint and all that jazz. Blue said, "Better recycle that bottle.
Maggie StiefvaterAnd then I opened my eyes and it was just Grace and me - nothing anywhere but Grace and me - she pressing her lips together as though she were keeping my kiss inside her, and me, holding this moment that was as fragile as a bird in my hands.
Maggie StiefvaterI 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.
Maggie StiefvaterI would like to say that I was inspired to write 'Shiver' by some overwhelming belief in true love, but here's my true confession: I wrote 'Shiver' because I like to make people cry.
Maggie StiefvaterOh my God. What inโโ I was going to be killed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked. โMom,โ Isabel snapped, interrupting. โDo you mind not staring? Itโs totally perv.
Maggie StiefvaterI remembered the pain as clearly as if I were shifting โ 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.
Maggie StiefvaterThe biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while Foster the People plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.
Maggie StiefvaterBoys like him didn't die; they got bronzed and installed outside public libraries.
Maggie StiefvaterAre you sure you want to go out with someone with that kind of history? ...He could have a psychotic break. I read that people get those when they're twenty-eight.
Maggie StiefvaterI feel a strange, fierce squeeze in my heart when I see him, like pride, although there's nothing about Sean that I can take credit for.
Maggie StiefvaterFolded in my arms you're a butterfly in reverse you're giving up your wings and inheriting my curse you're letting go of me you're letting go
Maggie StiefvaterLunch." I said. "Immediately. I'm going to wither away to absolutely nothing. Then you'll be racked with guilt." "I doubt it.
Maggie StiefvaterThe thing I was beginning to figure out about Sam and Grace, the thing about Sam not being able to function without her, was that that sort of love only worked when you were sure both people would always be around for each other. If one half of the equation left, or died, or was slightly less perfect in their love, it became the most tragic, pathetic story invented, laughable in its absurdity. Without Grace, Sam was a joke without a punch line.
Maggie StiefvaterWithout turning on the light, I went to my bed and lay down, my arm thrown across the mattress, my hand aching because Grace wasn't underneath it
Maggie StiefvaterWe 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
Maggie StiefvaterDo you feel better?โ I asked Sam as he opened the door to the Volkswagen for me. โYes,โ he said. He was still a terrible liar. โGood,โ I said. I was still a fantastic one.
Maggie StiefvaterIf that moment had been a real thing, it would've been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun.
Maggie StiefvaterSome 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.
Maggie StiefvaterHe was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.
Maggie StiefvaterJoseph Beringer...dances around behind me singing some poorly rhymed and slightly dirty song about my [racing] odds at my skirts. 'I don't even wear skirts,' I snap at him. 'Especially,' he says, 'in my daydreams.
Maggie StiefvaterReally, Rachel looked like a sun, bright and exuding energy, holding us two moons in a parallel orbit by the sheer force of her will.
Maggie StiefvaterSam came around the side of the car and stopped dead when he saw me. โOh my God, what is THAT?โ I used my thumb and middle finger to flick the multicolored pom-pom on top of my head. โIn my language, we call it a HAT. It keeps my ears warm.โ โOh my God,โ Sam said again, and closed the distance between us. He cupped my face in his hands and studied me. โItโs horribly cute.โ He kissed me, looked at the hat, and then he kissed me again. I vowed never to lose the pom-pom hat.
Maggie StiefvaterThey're saying that you and Sean Kendrick were burning up the cliffs." Tommy spins me again and grins at me. "And when I say you and Sean Kendrick, I mean you and Sean Kendrick. And by burning, I mean burning.
Maggie StiefvaterHis lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever.
Maggie Stiefvateryou just can't wait to get out of your head, can you?" "if you were in here you might want that too.
Maggie StiefvaterI don't think I could ever give up music. It's what makes me tick. If there was no music, there would be no writing.
Maggie StiefvaterI can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.
Maggie StiefvaterCole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered. He said, "That's how I would kiss you, if I loved you.
Maggie StiefvaterWith 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.
Maggie StiefvaterHe slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didnโt catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me.
Maggie Stiefvater