The Unbound Quotes

“The funny thing about armor is that it doesn't just keep other people out. It keeps us in. We build it up around us, not realizing that we're trapping ourselves.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“It’s okay to not be okay,” she says. “When you’ve been through things—whatever those things are—and you don’t allow yourself to not be okay, then you only make it worse. Our problems will tear us apart if we try to ignore them. They demand attention because they need it.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Having something and losing it, it's so much crueler than never having had it.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“You can't be two people. You end up being neither.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Caring about someone is scary, Mac. I know. Especially when you’ve lost people. It’s easy to think it’s not worth it. It’s easy to think life will hurt less if you don’t. But it’s not life unless you care about it.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“He leans in, resting his weathered hand on the bed. "Treat all the bad things like dreams, Kenzie. That way, no matter how scary or dark they get, you just have to survive until you wake up.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“I am not afraid of nightmares, because mine came true and I lived through them.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“And when he presses his lips into the curve of my throat, I can feel his tears on my skin.

“You are an idiot,” I say, even as I guide his face and mouth to mine. I kiss him, not gently, but desperately. Desperately, because he’s worth it—because life is terrifying and short and I don’t know what will happen. All I know is that here and now, I am still alive, and I want to be with Wesley Ayers. Here and now I want to feel his arms wrapped around me. I want to feel his lips on mine. I want to feel his life tangling with mine. Here and now is all we have, and I want to make it worth whatever happens next.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Da used to say that lies were easy, but trust was hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it's lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Doubt is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“WESLEY AYERS is the stranger in the halls of the Coronado. He is the Keeper in the garden who shares my secret. He is the boy who reads me books. He is the one who teaches me how to touch.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“But the fact is, dreams catch us with our armor off.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Everything that rises will fall. Empires, societies, governments. None of them lasts forever. Why? Because even though they are the products of change, they become resistant to change. The longer a society survives, the more it clings to its power, and the more it resists progress. The more it resists progress- resists change- the more its ciizens demand it. In response, the society tighten its grip, desperate to maintain control. It's afraid of losing its hold.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“I have to wonder if he has masks he wears, too. Maybe we all do.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Smiling is the worst thing you can do if you want the world to think you're okay when you're not. Some people can't help it - it's like a tic, a tell - and others do it on purpose, thinking people will buy whatever they're selling if it comes with a flash of teeth. But the truth is, smiling only makes a lie harder to pass off. It's like a giant crack in the front of a mask.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. Each body has a story to tell...”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“The world isn’t that black-and-white, is it? It doesn’t all boil down to with or against. Some of us just want to stay alive.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“People are made up of so many small details. Some—like the smell of cookies baking—we can recreate. Or at least try.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“There have been times when I've wavered. When I thought maybe I wanted to be normal. But the thing is, what we do, it's in our blood. It's who we are. Normal wouldn't fit us, even if we wanted to wear it.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“The shared secret of our second lives hangs between us, not like a weight, but like a lifeline.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“He used to tell me there were no bad dreams. Just dreams. That when we call them good or bad, we give importance to them. I know that doesn't make it better, Mac. I know it's easy to talk like that when you're awake. But the fact is, dreams catch us with our armor off.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Da thought of people as books to be read, but I've always thought of them more as formulas- full of variables, but always the sum of their parts.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“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, The Unbound

“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, The Unbound

“Lies are easy, but trust is hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it's lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back. And doubt, Da warned, is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Wes hits the table. "You broke into a crime scene without me?"
"Be glad, Wes, or we would have both been caught."
"We're a team, Mac. You don't go committing crimes without your partner in crime. Besides, if I'd been with you, we probably wouldn't have been caught. I could have stood at the door and made wild bird sounds or something when the cops came back. And if we did get caught, or mugshots would look fabulous.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“I never liked bad weather. Not until I met you.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“I've always been good at math. It's straightforward, black-and-white, right and wrong. Equations. Da thought of people as books to be read, but I've always thought of them more as formulas—full of variables, but always the sum of their parts. That's what their noise is, really: all of a person's components layered messily over one another. Thought and feeling and memory and all of it unorganized, until a person dies. Then it all gets compiled, straightened out into this linear thing, and you see exactly what the various parts add up to. What they equal.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it's lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Stare too long at anything and you start to wonder. And where does wondering get you? Nowhere good.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound