Richard Gansey Iii Quotes

“Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, 'You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.'
Gansey died.
'Goodbye,' Noah said. 'Don't throw it away.'
He quietly slid from time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: that was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“But what [Gansey] said was, "I'm going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn't just for Blue, either. All of us."
Ronan said, "I'm always straight."
Adam replied, "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told."
Blue said, "Okay.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“It'll be OK. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“If Glendower had not saved Gansey's life, he did not know who to thank, or who to be, or how to live.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It shouldn't have happened at all, but their friendship had been cemented in only the time it took to get to school that morning - Adam demonstrating how to fasten the Camaro's ground wire more securely, Gansey lifting Adam's bike halfway into the trunk so they could ride to school together, Adam confessing he worked at a mechanic's to put himself through Aglionby, and Gansey turning to the passenger seat and asking, "What do you know about Welsh kings?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Right,' he said. 'So it stands to reason there's something about the line that fortifies or protects a corpse. The soul. The ... animus. The quiddity of it.'
'Gansey, seriously,' Adam interrupted, to Blue's relief. 'Nobody knows what quiddity is.'
'The whatness, Adam. Whatever it is that makes a person who they are.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“At this, Gansey rolled over onto his back and folded his hands on his chest. He wore a salmon polo shirt, which, in Blue’s opinion, was far more hellish than anything they’d discussed to this point.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“She called Gansey.
"Blue?" he said.
Just his voice. Her heart tethered itself. Not completely, but enough to stop quivering so much. She closed her eyes”
― Maggie Stiefvater

“He could not remember the last time he had cried.

It was not just Glendower he was mourning. It was all the versions of Gansey he had been in the last seven years. It was the Gansey who had pursued him with youthful optimism and purpose. And it was the Gansey who had pursued him with increasing worry. And it was this Gansey, who was going to have to die. Because it made a fatal sort of sense. They required a death to save Ronan and Adam. Blue's kiss was supposed to be deadly to her true love. Gansey's death had been foretold for this year. It was him. It was always going to be him.

Glendower was dead. He'd always been dead.

And Gansey kind of wanted to live.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I'm sorry," Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. "That was very rude."

Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn't say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed.

He's going to die; this is going to hurt--

But she touched his neck, right where his hair was cut evenly above the collar of his shirt. He was very still. His skin was hot, and she could very, very faintly feel his pulse beneath her thumb. It wasn't like when she was with Adam. She didn't have to guess what to do with her hands. They knew. This was what it should have felt like with Adam. Less like playacting and more like a foregone conclusion.

He closed his eyes and leaned, just a little, so that her palm was flat on his neck, fingers sprawled from his ear to his shoulder.

Everything in Blue was charged. Say something. Say something.

Gansey lifted her hand gently from his skin, holding it as formally as a dance. He put it against his mouth.

Blue froze. Absolutely still. Her heart didn't beat. She didn't blink. She couldn't say don't kiss me. She couldn't even form don't.

He just leaned his cheek and the edge of his mouth against her knuckles, and then set her hand back.

"I know," he said. "I wouldn't."

Her skin burned with the memory of his mouth. The thrashing bird of her heart shivered and shivered again. "Thank's for remembering."

He looked back over the valley. "Oh, Jane."

"Oh, Jane, what?"

"He didn't want me to, did you know? He told me not to try to get you to come to the table that night at Nino's. I had to talk him into it. And then I made such an idiot of myself--" He turned back to her. "What are you thinking?"

She just looked at him. That I went out with the wrong boy. That I destroyed Adam tonight for no reason at all. That I'm not sensible at all--"I thought you were an asshole."

Gallantly, he said, "Thank God for past tense." Then: "I can't--we can't do this to him."

It was jagged inside her. "I'm not a thing. To have."

"No. Jesus. Of course you're not. But you know what I mean."

She did. And he was right. They couldn't do this to him. She shouldn't do it to herself, anyway. But how it made a disaster of her chest and her mouth and her head.

"I wish you could be kissed, Jane," he said. "Because I would beg one off you. Under all this." He flailed an arm toward the stars. "And then we'd never say anything about it again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“It was this: Gansey starting down the stairs to the kitchen, Blue starting up, meeting in the middle. It was Gansey stepping aside to let her pass, but changing his mind. He caught her arm and then the rest of her. She was warm, alive, vibrant beneath the thin cotton; he was warm, alive vibrant beneath his. Blue slid her hand over his bare shoulder and then onto his chest, her palm spread out flat on his breastbone, her fingers pressed curiously into his skin.

"I thought you would be hairier," she whispered.

"Sorry to disappoint. The legs have a bit more going on."

"Mine too."

It was this: laughing senselessly into each other's skin, playing, until it was abruptly no longer play, and Gansey stopped himself with his mouth perilously close to hers, and Blue stopped herself with her belly pressed close to his.

It was this: Gansey saying, "I like you an awful lot, Blue Sargent."

It was this: Blue's smile--crooked, wry, ridiculous, flustered. There was a lot of happiness tucked into the corner of that smile, and even though her face was several inches from Gansey, some of it still spilled out and got on him. She put her finger on his cheek where he knew his own smile was dimpling it, and then they took each other's hands, and they climbed back up together.

It was this: this moment and no other moment, and for the first time that Gansey could remember, he knew what it would feel like to be present in his own life.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“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.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Here is what I have learned," Henry said. "If you cannot be unafraid--"

There was a place where terror stopped and became nothingness. But today, in this hole, with an insect on his skin, with a promise that he was to die soon, the nothingness never came.

Henry finished, "--be afraid and happy.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“He didn't always remember why he was doing this, but he remembered what he was doing: looking for the first time Gansey had died.

He couldn't remember the first time he'd made this choice. It was hard, now, to remember what was remembering and what was actually repeating. He wasn't even certain now which he was doing.

Noah just knew he had to keep doing it until the moment. He only had to stay solid long enough to make sure it stuck.

Here he was: Gansey, so young, twitching and dying in the leaves of a wood at the same time that Noah, miles away, had been twitching and dying in the leaves of a different wood.

All times were the same. As soon as Noah died, his spirit, full of the ley line, favored by Cabeswater, had felt spread over every moment he had experienced and was going to experience. It was easy to look wise when time was a circle.

Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, "You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not."

Gansey died.

"Good-bye," Noah said. "Don't throw it away."

He quietly slid from time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It was this: Koh demonstrating how to make a toga of a bedsheet and sending Blue and Gansey into a cluttered bedroom to change. It was Gansey politely turning his back as she undressed and then Blue turning hers--maybe turning hers. It was Blue's shoulder and her collarbone and her legs and her throat and her laugh her laugh her laugh. He couldn't stop looking at her, and here, it didn't matter, because no one here cared that they were together. Here, he could play his fingers over her fingers as they stood close, she could lean her cheek on his bare shoulder, he could hook his ankle playfully in hers, she could catch herself with an arm around his waist. Here he was unbelievably greedy for that laugh.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Blue took Gansey's hand.

Adam was glad she did.

"Gross," Ronan said, which was the most juvenile response possible.

But Gansey said, "Thanks for the input, Ronan," with a proper look on his face again, and Adam saw how cleverly Ronan had released the tension of the moment. They could all breathe again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Now that Gansey had had more than a second to think about it, he considered all the ways such a thing might have played out. He imagined Adam, ever the scientist. Ronan, ferocious and loyal and fragile. "Don't break him, Adam."

Adam continued peering out the window. The only tell to the furious working of his mind was the slow twisting together of his fingers. "I'm not an idiot, Gansey."

"I'm serious." Now Gansey's imagination had run ahead to imagine a future where Ronan might have to exist without him, without Declan, without Matthew, and with a freshly broken heart. "He's not as tough as he seems.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Everything Ronan had ever said about Adam restructured itself in Gansey's mind. What a strange constellation they all were.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey had first met him. "Is Noah out here?"

"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"

"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.

Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"

Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“In the end, it was such a simple, small thing. He had felt flashes of it before in his life, the absolute certainty. But the truth was that he'd kept walking away from it. It was a far more terrifying idea to imagine how much control he really had over how his life turned out. Easier to believe that he was a gallant ship tossed by fate than to captain it himself.

He would steer it now, and if there were rocks near shore, so be it.

"Tell me where Owen Glendower is," he said to the darkness. Crisp and sure, with the same power he had used to command Noah, to command the skeletons in the cave. "Show me where the Raven King is.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: this was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.

"It has to happen now," he said. "I have to do the sacrifice now."

Now that the moment had come, there was a certain glory to it. He didn't want to die, but at least he was doing it for these people, his found family. At least he was doing it for people who he knew were going to really live. At least he was not dying pointlessly, stung by wasps. At least this time it would matter.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Gansey felt the feeling of time slipping--one last time. The sense of having done this before. He gently laid the backs of his hands on her cheeks. He whispered, "It'll be okay. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me."

The rain splatted about them, kicking up splashes of red-black, making the petals around them twitch. Dream things from Ronan's newly healed imagination piled around their feet. In the rain, everything smelled of these mountains in fall: oak leaves and hay fields, ozone and dirt turned over. It was beautiful here, and Gansey loved it. It had taken a long time, but he'd ended up where he wanted after all.

Blue kissed him.

He had dreamt of it often enough, and here it was, willed into life. In another world, it would just be this: a girl softly pressing her lips to a boy's. But in this one, Gansey felt the effects of it at once. Blue, a mirror, an amplifier, a strange half-tree soul with ley line magic running through her. And Gansey, restored once by the ley line's power, given a ley line heart, another kind of mirror. And when they were pointed at each other, the weaker one gave.

Gansey's ley line heart had been gifted, not grown.

He pulled back from her.

Out loud, with intention, with the voice that left no room for doubt, he said, "Let it be to kill the demon."

Right after he spoke, Blue threw her arms tightly around his neck. Right after he spoke, she pressed her face into the side of his. Right after he spoke, she held him like a shouted word. Love, love, love.

He fell quietly from her arms.

He was a king.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Humans were such tricky and complicated things.

As it began to spin life and being out of its dreamstuff, the remaining trees began to hum and sing together. Once upon a time, their songs had sounded different, but in this time, they sang the songs the Greywaren had given to them. It was a wailing, ascending tune, full of both misery and joy at once. And as Cabeswater distilled its magic, these trees began to fall, one by one.

The psychic's daughter's sadness burst through the forest, and Cabeswater accepted that, too, and put it into the life it was building.

Another tree fell, and another, and Cabeswater kept returning again and again to the humans who had made the request. It had to remember what they felt like. It had to remember to make itself small enough.

As the forest diminished, the Greywaren's despair and wonder surged through Cabeswater. The trees sang soothingly back to him, a song of possibility and power and dreams, and then Cabeswater collected his wonder and put it into the life it was building.

And finally, the magician's wistful regret twisted through what remained of the trees. Without this, what was he? Simply human, human, human. Cabewaster pressed leaves against his cheek one last time, and then they took that humanity for the life it was building.

It was nearly human-shaped. It would fit well enough. Nothing was ever perfect.

Make way for the Raven King.

The last tree fell, and the forest was gone, and everything was absolutely silent.

Blue touched Gansey's face. She whispered, "Wake up.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Richard Campbell Gansey III, Ronan's oldest friend, was in the country for the wedding, and so was Blue Sargent. They had just graduated from the same sociology program with two very different concentrations. Both of them were very excited to talk about what they had studied to anyone who would listen, but no one except for each other was very excited to hear about it. Some something trenches something something artifacts something something secret doors something something trees something something primary sources.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren

“They all looked up sharply as the door to the back opened. Blue and Maura stepped into the waiting room as a nurse began to shuffle behind the counter. All attention immediately shifted to Blue.

She had two visible stitches in her right eyebrow, pinning together the cleaned-up edges of a gouge that continued down her cheek. Faint scratches on either side of the deepest wound told the story of fingers clawing into her skin. Her right eye was squinted mostly shut, but at least it was still there. Adam could tell she was hurting.

He knew he cared about her because his stomach was tingling uncomfortably just looking at her wound, the suggestion of violence scratching through him like fingers on a chalkboard. Noah had done that. Adam curled his own hand into a fist, remembering what it had felt like for it to move on its own accord.

Gansey was right: Any of them could have died tonight. It was time to stop playing around.

For a strange second, none of them spoke.

Finally, Ronan said, "Jesus God, Sargent. Do you have stitches on your face? Bad. Ass. Put it here, you asshole."

With some relief, Blue lifted her fist and bumped it against his.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Gansey stepped into the yard and the dense flock immediately rushed up around him. They swirled around him, wings brushing against him, feathers touching his cheek. He couldn't see anything but the birds, every shape and color. His heart was a winged thing itself. He couldn't catch his breath.

He was so afraid.

If you can't be unafraid, Henry said, be afraid and happy.

The flock dipped away. They meant to be followed, and they meant to be followed now. They swirled up in a great column over the Camaro.

Make way! they shouted. Make way for the Raven King! It was loud enough now that lights were beginning to come on in the houses.

Gansey climbed into the car and turned the key--start, Pig, start. It growled to life. Gansey was all things at once: elated, terrified, overcome, satiated.

With a squeal of tires, he pursued his king.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“It was friendly. That was a friend thing."

He seemed anxious for Gansey to believe that his motives were pure, so Gansey said quickly, "I know that. Just--I don't meet many people who make friends like I do. So--fast."

Henry flipped crazy devil horns at him. "Jeong, bro."

"What's that mean?"

"Who knows," Henry said. "It means being Henry. It means being Richardman. Jeong. You never say the word, but you live it anyway. I will be honest, I did not expect to find it in a guy such as yourself. It's like we've met each other before. No, not really. We are friends are once, we would instantly do what friends would do for each other. Not just pals. Friends. Blood brothers. You just feel it. We instead of you and me. That's jeong."

Gansey was aware on a certain level that the description was melodramatic, heightened, illogical. But on a deeper level, it felt, true, familiar, and like it explained much of Gansey's life. It was how he felt about Ronan and Adam and Noah and Blue. With each of them, it had felt instantly right: relieving. Finally, he'd thought, he'd found them. We instead of you and me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“The first moment of realization was giving way to a second, and third, and each new minute revealed some facet that Gansey had not yet let himself consider. There would be no waking of Glendower, so there was no favor. Noah's life would not be begged for, the demon would not be bargained away. There may have never been magic involved with Glendower; his corpse may have been brought to the New World only to be buried out of reach of the English; it was possible that Gansey needed to notify the historian community of this find, if it was even findable by normal means. If Glendower had always been dead, it could not have been him who spared Gansey.

If Glendower had not saved Gansey's life, he did not know who to thank, or who to be, or how to live.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Gansey?" Blue asked.

Every minute was giving way to another and then another, and slowly it sank into his heart, all the way to the center:

It was over.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King