Shiver Quotes
"I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves."
"I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm."
"Then he was gone, and without him, the other wolves closed in, too close, suffocating."
"I was lost to a sea of cold, and then I was reborn into a world of warmth."
"The hunger that burned and gnawed, an insatiable master."
"I saw her, in a way I’d never seen anything before."
"But no matter how long I waited, no matter how hard I tried to reach him, he would always melt into the undergrowth before I could cross the distance between us."
"I didn’t realize that the wolves in the wood were all werewolves until Jack Culpeper was killed."
"I fell asleep to the scent of my wolf. Pine needles, cold rain, earthy perfume, coarse bristles on my face."
"The words spilled out, my voice low. 'Olivia, this is going to sound stupid. The new wolf—I think something happened when the wolves attacked Jack.'"
"The distance between us had never felt so vast."
"One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing."
"For a moment, I forgot where—who—I was. For a moment, it didn’t matter."
"I saw it. I saw her, in a way I’d never seen anything before."
"It was an excellent career path and one of the few that doesn’t require college yet."
"As if she’d been waiting for me to notice the pitiful job she was doing."
"I thought the whole pack might vanish into human form. The idea was immediately unbearable, only because I wanted it to be true so badly that it hurt."
"I knew my wolf’s howl; his rich tone sang out above the others as if begging me to hear it."
"Sorry to have bored you for so long. Must’ve killed you to look entertained."
"No, you’re just telling me that I’m creepy obsessed with something that’s important to me. That’s very philanthropic of you. Thanks for the help."
"Oh, grow up," snapped Olivia, and pushed around me.
"How beautiful objectivity is," Isabel snapped.
"You don’t know that the wolves did it. He could’ve been—"
"God," I said, glancing around to see how many people had seen my car gasp to a halt.
"You have to tell them to stop! They can’t shoot back there!"
"Your phone. You have to call them and tell them to stop. I have a friend in there! She was going to take photos this afternoon. In the woods. Please, you have to call them!"
"It’s rude to stare, but the great thing about staring at a sedated person is that they don’t know you’re doing it."
"He’s been heavily sedated, hon. He won’t wake up until the morning."
"Are you sleeping?" Sam’s voice was barely a whisper.
"We ran. We were silent, dark drops of water, rushing over brambles and around the trees as the men drove us before them."
"I couldn’t stop staring at her fingers resting on my skin."
"I kissed her. Just the barest brush of my lips against hers, nothing animal."
"For once in my life, I was here and nowhere else."
"When the temperature drops, I become a wolf."
"The longer you’re a wolf, the warmer it has to be for you to become human."
"Nobody knows how many years you get of switching back and forth. It’s different for every wolf."
"We can’t—the wolves—when we communicate, it’s with images. Nothing complicated."
"Things like time, and names, and complicated emotions are all out of the question."
"It’s just a way of talking, but our brains are different as wolves."
"It doesn’t make you a monster. It just takes away your inhibitions."
"One happy day for every falling leaf you catch."
"You did read a lot. And spent too much time just inside the kitchen window, where I couldn’t see you very well."
"I have to get inside soon. It’s getting cold."
"If I didn’t let go of her hand, I’d be all right."
"I stood beside him, looking up, no words in my mouth."
"My vision flashed with jerky memories of humans shifting into wolves, hundreds of shifts over my years with the pack."
"Night crouched in the trees, waiting to overtake us, cold and black."
"I couldn’t let Grace see me change. I couldn’t change now."
"God, please let the power be on. Please let the heat be on."
"It’s the one thing we keep. Our eyes stay the same."
"I couldn’t keep it together. I would keep it together."
"I remembered Sam convulsing on the floor, eyes vacant, and the animal whimper he made as he realized that he was losing himself."
"I just want to do things right, okay? I only get this one chance to do things right with you."
"It’s not a superpower. It’s a consolation prize."
"I can’t even remember how to do it now. While I’m me. I only do it when I’m a wolf."
"You have to listen to the pattern of the words, not just what they’re saying. Like a song."
"What then would I do with my lips? With my night? With my day? I have no beloved, no house, no place that I live."
"I don’t know," I said into her neck, balling my hands into fists between us to get them warm. I didn’t know. I just knew that Jack was an unknown, and that I didn’t know what kind of person he was, what sort of a wolf he was. "I don’t know," I said again.
"Sam, it’s not worth it," Grace said, and she pressed her face, hard, against my head. "What if you’d changed?" Her fingers were tight on the sleeves of my shirt, and now her voice was breathy. "What were you thinking?"
"Maybe it wasn’t Jack I should’ve been looking for."
"On the way over, I kept thinking about what Grace had said the other night about the electricity and the milk in the fridge. Maybe, just maybe, Beck would be there, relieving me of the responsibility of Jack and eliminating the unbearable weight of being the last one of my kind."
"Spiraling through insanity together made it seem more sane."
"Sam!" Beck’s voice held something weird—surprise, I think. His grin widened. "Sam, thank God. Come here!"
"You smell like hospital." Beck squinted at me. "And you look like hell."
Beck grinned. "Exactly. Anyway, it’s got my number in its brain already. So use it. You might have to buy a charger for it."
"Beck, are you seeing this?" I leaned against the Tahoe, looking in at the girl, fingers clawed into the bloodstained carpet of the back. "What is going on?"
"Sam, it’s probably my last year. I don’t think I’ll change next year. It took a lot of quick thinking this year to keep myself human once I finally had changed." He saw my eyes looking at the different-colored collars at his neck and he nodded. "We need this house. The pack needs this house. And the pack needs protectors still able to change. You already know. We can’t rely on humans. We are the only ones who can protect us."
"Whatever it is will keep till morning. And if it doesn’t, it isn’t worth it anyway. Sleep."
"I have that, you know, what’s it called? That syndrome where you identify with the people who save you?"
"Books are more real when you read them outside."
"No," he admitted, "right in this moment, I can’t even remember what unhappy feels like."
"You’re beautiful and sad," I said finally, not looking at him when I did. "Just like your eyes. You’re like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again."
"It’s not like that. It was only two times. And I haven’t been able to do it again, ever, no matter how badly I’ve wanted to. And believe me, I’ve wanted it pretty badly."
"I’ll court you properly and then it won’t make my obsession with you so creepy."
"In the book, the characters had searched for the others, only to get separated and end up alone. For some reason, Sam’s question made my heart beat a little faster, and I gripped a handful of his T-shirt in my fist."
"Why can’t I make them love me any more than they do?"
"Maybe I’m too good. If I got into trouble at school or burned down people’s garages, they’d have to notice me."
"They’re just silly, selfish people, that’s all."
"I wish I had what you have," I said. "What do I have?"
"I’d like to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl, but I’m never warm enough for my lovely summer girl."
"Anything’s possible in this lush rabbit hole / Is it mirror or portrait you’ve given to me? / All of these permutations of dreams will patrol / this lovely wasteland of color I see."
"We wolves did many things: change, hide, sing underneath a pale, lonely moon—but we never disappeared entirely."
"You are what you are. When you’re a wolf, or when you’re shifting, you don’t have human inhibitions, so if you’re naturally angry or violent, you get worse."
"Everyone except the one I wish I could take with me. 'Pretty much.'"
"I guess I was waiting for someone to jump out of the curtain and say, ‘Whoopdie-friggin-doo, fooled you! No such thing as werewolves. What were you thinking?’"
"The quiche is done. At least I get a consolation prize."
"You’re the girl, aren’t you? The girl who was in my house?"
"World of words lost on the living. I take my place with the walking dead."
"I thought about taking my homework out. I thought about the sun creeping down toward the tree line and I wondered how cold it was in the shade."
"Even though I’d seen his eyes peering out of a wolf’s body, even though I’d heard Isabel say she’d seen him, even though we’d known he was alive for weeks, I wasn’t prepared for seeing Jack in the flesh."
""You’re driving like an idiot. If you don’t want to get pulled over by the cops, you’d better slow down. Where are we going?""
""I’m not telling you anything until you take me to wherever Sam is.""
""It’s like you said. You know where Sam is. Nothing’s going to happen to you, because we have to know where he is.""
"Crap. It was cold. Not cold enough for me to change, not yet. But it would be soon."
""Unless he’s turned into a bicycle, he’s not in here, either.""
""I keep thinking about why I didn’t change," I said slowly. "If I was born immune, or something. But I wasn’t, you know? Because I got that flu. And because I still am not really—normal. I can smell better and hear better.""
""But see, it could be a cure, couldn’t it? Get you really hot?""
""I don’t want to do this anymore, Grace. It’s not good enough anymore to watch you from the woods, not now that I’ve been with you—the real thing. I can’t just watch anymore. I’d rather risk whatever could happen—"
""Grace, I love you, you know I do. I’ve loved you for years. You know that.""
""These stay the same. Remember that when you look at me. Remember it’s me. Please.""