Kami Garcia Quotations

As much as I love to dive into the action early, I think the hero's journey is important - the idea that the reader needs to experience the protagonist's everyday life before you turn that world upside down.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

At the beginning of a new project, often before I do any actual writing, I collect photos, quotes, song lyrics, and even objects that relate to the characters or the world I'm creating.

I start with a beat sheet, which is more of an abbreviated outline. It hits all the major plot points. From there, I move to note cards. But the most important part of my process is my inspiration board.

Do you believe in love after last sight?

It's crazy what you see if you aren't really looking.

I had never been this mad at her before. It was one thing to be attacked by someone you hated, but this was something else. This was the kind of hurt that could only be inflicted by someone you loved, who you thought loved you. It was sort of like being stabbed from the inside out.

I'm just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can't give you the answers.

We don't get to chose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.

Blood of my heart, protection is thine. Life of my life, taking yours, taking mine Body of my body, marrow and mind Soul of my soul, to our spirit bind Blood of my heart, my tides, my moon Blood of my heart, my salvation, my doom

In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.

In one moment I was feeling everything and I was feeling nothing.

You're incredibly, absolutely, extremely, supremely, unbelievably different.

Lena's hair was sticking out in about fifteen directions, and her eyes were all small and puffy from crying. So this was what girls looked like in the morning. I had never seen one, not up close.

Even lost in the darkness, my heart will find you.

Who burns me and shocks me and shatters me with a single touch.

Jewelry, I'm telling you. It's a thing. And love. And maybe danger.

There wasn't enough chocolate in the world to make this better.

I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to.

I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own broken mess of a life. All because I thought Lena didn't love me anymore. But I was stupid, and I was wrong. Lena loved me so much, she was willing to risk everything to save me. I had given up on Lena, after she had refused to give up on me. I owed her my life. It was as simple as that.

I didn't want to choose one world. I wanted to be part of both. I didn't want to see only one side of the sky. I wanted to see it all.

I love her beyond the universe and back. I love her from this world to the next.

I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I'll never love you any less than I do, right this second.

The story you are afraid to write is usually the one you are meant to tell.

I'll love you until the day after forever.

moments bleed together, no span to time

I loved her, atom by atom, one burning cell at a time.

There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.

These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.

It smelled like aging wood and creosote, plastic book covers, and old paper. Old paper, which my mom used to say was the smell of time itself.

Well? Is it true? Did she?" "Did she what?" "You know. Fall outta the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down?

There is a point. I don't know what it is, but everything I've had, and everything I've lost, and everything I felt—it meant something.

The more I learned about the world I thought I knew and all the ones I didn't, the more everything threaded together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I'll drive like my grandma. I'll drive like your grandma." "You wouldn't say that if you knew my gramma.

words same as always same as nothing when nothing is the same

Even in the slippery blur of heat and arms and noise, Lena affected everything in her wake, a pull as powerful as the moon to the tides, or the planets to the sun. I was caught in her orbit, even as she pulled away from mine.

What we had went so much deeper than a kiss. When we were together, she turned me completely inside out. It didn't matter if we were dead or alive. We could never be kept apart. There were some things more powerful than worlds or universes. She was my world, as much as I was hers. What we had, we knew. The poems are all wrong. It's a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper. And sometimes gold can stay. Anybody who's ever been in love can tell you that.

I needed to touch her, like I needed to breathe.

the missing piece my breath my heart my memory me the other half the missing half

The ways I could hurt her and hurt myself. Those two things were intertwined somehow. It's hard to explain, but when you were as closed off as I was the past few months, opening felt as wrong as stripping naked in church.

surrounded by strangers who love me (un)strangers made strange by pain

If a girl says not to get her a birthday present that means get me a birthday present and make sure it's jewelry.

The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.

Old things are better than new things, because they've got stories in them, Ethan.

Dig deep. Find your way to your soul.

High school sucked. It was a universal truth, and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional.

She was my destination. I was always on the way to Lena, even when I wasn't. Even when she wasn't on her way to me.

The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut. My mom used to say, "This is my church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family.

Maybe it needed to be broken. Sometimes things have to break before you can fix them.

Darkness, real darkness, was more than just a lack of light.

Nothing in my life is a coincidence.

Some things are private, Ethan. Even for grown-ups.

A little known fact: I read all the time. books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while.

Writing a book is hard. It turns out, writing a second book is twice as hard.

You're so full of crap, you could pass for a toilet.

You end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses.

Fate decides until challenged by the fated

Don’t think so. We all make our choices, and those choices have consequences.

It’s funny how you can live somewhere your whole life, but not really see it.

The good and the bad, the sugar and the salt, the kicks and the kisses—what’s come before and what will come after, you and me—

I watched for her hair to curl, the telltale Caster breeze. It didn't move. This wasn't Caster magic she was working. It was another kind altogether. She couldn't charm her way out from under Macon's watch. She would have to resort to older magic, stronger magic, the kind that had worked best on Macon from the time she first moved to Ravenwood. Plain old love.

It's hard to imagine a place like that really exists. People have been judging me my whole life.

The stuffs you're good at and the stuffs you're bad at are just different parts of the same thing. Same goes for people you love and the people you don't. And the people who love you and the people who don't. The only thing that mattered was that you cared about a few people.

Obviously the whole Wayward thing hasn't been explained to you properly. You don't have any superpowers. You can't leap over tall buildings in a single bound or fight Dark Casters with your magic cat. Basically, you're a glorified tour guide who's no better equipped to face a bunch of Dark Casters than Mary P. over here -Ridley

Nightmares end. That's how you know they're nightmares.

Maybe there isn't a meaning to life. Maybe there's only a meaning to living.

Arelia looked up at Macon. "It's not the house that protects her. It's the boy. I've never seen anything like it. No Caster can come between them.

Sharpie? A mischievous smile spread across her face. I thought you said you couldn't control your powers. Beginner's luck.

Lena made a face. She almost never wore makeup; she didn't have to. "You know, it's not like we all sign a contract with Maybelline when we turn thirteen.

Exactly. They're stupid. Who cares?" "I care. They bother me. And that's why I'm stupid. That makes me exponentially more stupid than stupid. I'm stupid to the power of stupid." She waved her hand. The moon blew away. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." I looked at her out of the corner of my eye.

Was it worth it? Feeling better for a minute or two, knowing that the cold would still be out there waiting?

I couldn't sit by and watch them try to take her down. Not her.

Even when I didn't know anything else about where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. You were my Wayward, even then. Everything always brought me back to you. Everything.

Just as I lay back, she sat up. I sat up, and she flopped back down. Awkward. That was my every move when it came to her. Now we were both lying down, staring up at the blue sky.

I'd never really thought past the whole dying-for-the-sake-of-the-world part of things. When you're alive, you don't dwell on how you're going to spend your time once you're dead. You just figure you're gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.

Nothing was ever how you wanted it to be. Not anymore. Not for me.

A kiss that was every bit as big and every bit as small as a kiss can be.

No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house--on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she'd use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork.

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.

There were only two kinds of people in our town. ―The stupid and the stuck- ―The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.

Don’t spit down my back and tell me it’s raining.

Who can judge the judge?

the wheel of fate crushes us all

We are given to the great, for great purpose, to great ends. We are given to the grave, for grave purposes, to grave ends.

And you can look up just about anything, even dirty pictures. Every now and again, the dirtiest pictures you ever saw would pop up on the screen. Imagine!

What did you do to Amma?" "I was late to school." He studied my face. I studied his. "Number 2?" I nodded. "Sharp?" "Started out sharp and then she sharpened it.

As I followed him along the sharp black stones, I could hear Link's voice in my head. "Bad move, man. He's gonna kill you, stuff you, and add you to his collection of idiots who followed him back to his creepy cave

Lies, lies are the place where darkness grows.

I watched the way they looked at each other. Any idiot could see they were in love, even if they were the only two idiots who couldn't.

Power is neither good nor evil.

A Seer's moon, a Siren's tears, Nineteen Mortal, Wayward fears, Incubus graves and Caster rivers, The Final Page the End delivers.

It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.

You need help, and that's what books are for.

I almost ran you down, remember? I have to be nice to you, so you don't have me arrested.

Knowing you don't have much time left changes things. You get kind of philosophical. And you figure things out-more like, they figure themselves out-and everything gets real clear.

I really was alone, and the only thing worse than being alone was having everyone else see how lonely you were

Are you accusing me of reading? ~ Ridley

It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.

She didn't say a work, and I gave up trying, because you couldn't hear either one of us over the shattering noise of hearts breaking and the looming shadow of the last word, the one we refused to say.