The collection / 52 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

52 results · Page 2 of 3Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Wesley's touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

02Undated

Everything hurts. I don't know how to make it stop. It hurts when I breathe. It hurts when I think. I feel like I'm drowning, and it's my fault, and I don't know how to be okay. I don't know if I CAN be okay. I don't know if I should be allowed to be okay.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

03Undated

The only way to truly record a person is not in words, not in still frames, but in bone and skin and memory.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

04Undated

There are no monsters in the dark.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

05Undated

We do it, Jackson, because compassion must be louder than pride.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

06Undated

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

07Undated

The worse thing you can do in a fight is stop moving. When someone attacks, they create force, movement, momentum, but you'll be okay as long as you can see and feel the direction of that force and travel with it.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

08Undated

Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

09Undated

The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If out start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight and you'll get caught. Once suspicion is planted it becomes exponentially harder to sell the next lie.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

10Undated

He manages a sad smile. “An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It’s a manipulation.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

11Undated

Even if surviving wasn't simple, or easy, or fair.Even if he could never be human.He wanted the chance to matter.He wanted to live.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

12Undated

Kell managed an echo of her smile, and [Lila] gasped. "What's that on your face?"The smile vanished. "What?""Never mind," she said, laughing. "It's gone.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

13Undated

For one, dazzling, infinite moment, August felt like he was standing on a precipice, the end of one world and the beginning of another, a whisper and a bang.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

14Undated

Cole steps forward, his fingers reaching around my shoulders, and kisses me. It is sudden and smooth and soft as air against my lips. The wind whips around us, tugging at the fabric of our clothes, but not pulling us apart. And then it's gone, the cool pressure against my lips, and my eyes are open and looking into two gray eyes like river rocks."/That's/ what you wanted to show me?""No," he says, his fingers slipping down my arms as he leads me off the path and out, away from Near. "That was just in case.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

15Undated

I’m willing to walk in darkness if it keeps humans in the light.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

16Undated

He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were really all as stupid as they seemed).

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

17Undated

Magda looks at me as if I've gone mad. Or I've grown up. It's kind of the same thing.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

18Undated

A person chose their path. Or they made a new one.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

19Undated

August stared at her, aghast. "Did I know that kissing you would bring your soul to surface? That - THAT - would have the same effect as pain or music? No, I must have missed that lesson."She stared at him, agape. "August, was that sarcasm?

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

20Undated

Be lost. Give up. Give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

21Undated

Like I said, Kenzie. Everything ends. I’m not afraid to die,” you say with a wan smile. “I just hope I’m smart enough to stay dead.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

22Undated

That's how he saw climbing, a physical exercise in positive and negative space. The vast expanse of white drawing the small, person-shaped speck into sharp relief.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

23Undated

Properly buried.""Properly kept.""That is the way with witches.""And with all things.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗

24Undated

Well," I ask, leaning over him, "do you wish to stay?""I do.""And why is that, Cole?" I say, tipping toward him so that our noses nearly brush."Well," he says with a smile, "the weather's quite nice.

Victoria Schwab / quote

↗