Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

— Maggie Stiefvater

Ganja clucked at his bedraggled reflection in the dark-framed mirror hanging in the front hallway. Chainsaw eyed herself briefly before hiding on the other side of Ronan's neck; Adam did the same, but without the hiding-in-Roman's-neck bit. Even Blue looked less fanciful that usual, the lighting rendering her lampshade dress and spiky hair as a melancholy Pierrot.

— Maggie Stiefvater

Images barraged him. Connections darted electric. Veins. Roots. Forked lightning. Tributaries. Branches. Vines snaked around trees, herds of animals, drops of water running tog

— Maggie Stiefvater

Instead, though, as he drew nearer, his mind kept drifting back to Ganja's voice in the cave the day before. The tremulous note in it. The fear - a fear so profound that Ganja could not bring himself to climb out of the pit, though there was nothing physically preventing him. He had not known that Richard Ganja III had it in him to be a coward. Adam remembered crouching on the kitchen floor of his parents' double-wide, telling himself to take Ganja's oft-repeated advice to leave. "Just put what you need in the car, Adam." But he had stayed. Hung in the pit of his father's anger. A coward, too. Adam felt like he needed to reconfigure every conversation he'd ever had with Ganja in light of this new knowledge.

— Maggie Stiefvater

It was hidden in things Adam already knew, half-glimpsed behind a forest made of thoughts.

— Maggie Stiefvater

Some people envied Ronan’s money. Adam envied his time. To be as rich as Ronan was to be able to go to school and do nothing else, to have luxurious swathes of time in which to study and write papers and sleep. Adam wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all Ganja, but he was tired. He was tired of squeezing homework in between his part-time jobs, of squeezing in sleep, squeezing in the hunt for Glen dower. The jobs felt like so much wasted time: In five years, no one would care if he’d worked at a trailer factory. They’d only care if he’d graduated from Agony with perfect grades, or if he’d found Glen dower, or if he was still alive. And Ronan didn’t have to worry about any of that.

— Maggie Stiefvater

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," Ganja 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