Maggie Stiefvater’s “Linger” Quotes (53 Quotes)


    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!

    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.





    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.




    Rilke says: Verweilung, auch am Verstrautesten nicht, ist uns gegeben - We are not allowed to linger, even with what is most intimate.



    So here's my theory, and this is such crap science, I don't have to tell you. It's science without microscopes, blood tests, or reality.

    Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure.

    There was nothing particularly special about her, except that she was good with numbers, and very good at lying, and she made her home in between the pages of books.

    To Grace, these were the things that mattered: my hands on her cheeks, my lips on her mouth. The fleeting touches that meant I loved her.


    I had risked everything, and I had nothing to show for it but my open hand, lying empty and palm up toward the ceiling.

    It's like how on certain days some people wear sweaters when other people can wear t-shirts and still feel comfortable - different reactions to the same temperature.

    Avoiding a bathtub because your parents tried to kill you in one isn't the same as avoiding your entire life by becoming a wolf.

    I had this feeling that he and I , in this moment, were a car crash, and instead of putting on the brakes, I was hitting the accelerator.


    Because you know that's not how you want it to end. You know I'd love to have you with me, and it will be that way, one day. But this isn't the way it ought to happen.




    I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

    Most people had an acquired kind of beauty, they became better looking the longer you knew them and the better you loved them, but Cole had unfairly skipped to the end of the game, all jaggedly handsome and Hollywood-looking. Not needing any love to get there.

    Don't give me that look. I'm not trying to find out who you are. I don't care who you are. I just want to know why it is you are the way you are.

    I turned back to my extracurricular study of death and disease. Because no matter what Grace thought, I knew that in Mercy Falls, it's never over

    Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing.

    I wasn't sure if I admired him for feeling everything so hard and fiercely, or if I was contemptuous of him for having so much emotion that he had to spill it out every window of the house.

    Everything was ruined, and everything was wrong, and not being able to shif shouldn've been the end of the world. But instead, for once, it was okay. --Cole's perspective





    If you're reading this, I'm either a wolf for good, or you're Ulrik and you should get the hell out of my stuff.



    Humming and singing my new song, I led them up and down the stairs, pressing my fingers against the wall like I was about to push it over; down to the lobby, where I stood in a pot plant; and finally into the alley behind the studio, where I jumped on top of the car that had brought us from the hotel, leaving dents in the roof so the car would remember me.


    I am standing here in the shed, and I'm waiting to see if my seeds are going to poke out ofthe dirt. I don't know if it's too early to look for signs of life or if, this time, winter has claimed my family for good.


    I considered calling Grace to ask her what I should say to a reticent suicidal werewolf, but I'd left my phone somewhere. Car, maybe.

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

    I couldn't imagine anyone ever reading a book enough to make it look like that. It looked like it had been driven over by a school bus after someone had taken a bath with it.

    It occurred to me then that I was the opposite of my father. Because I was very, very good at destroying things.

    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.



    More Maggie Stiefvater Quotations (Based on Topics)


    World - Winter - Faces - Death & Dying - Life - Parents - Hell - Future - Fathers - Medicine & Medical - Cars - People - Books - Night - Hair - Memory - Sadness - Perfection - Silence - View All Maggie Stiefvater Quotations

    More Maggie Stiefvater Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Linger
    - Shiver

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