Liam Stewart Quotes

“He's so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they're holding in their hand.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Give 'em hell, darlin”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“I can't--I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe--I just--"
"Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just... Can we just go back to the others?"
"I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop--"
He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind.
"I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“—I don't want to lose you
—Then why are you the one that keeps letting go?”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“God." He shook his head, mouth twisting into a shadow of a smile. "Did you know... you make me so happy that sometimes I actually forget to breathe? I'll be looking at you, and my chest will get so tight... and it's like, the only thought in my head is how much I want to reach over and kiss you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Nope," he whispered, when I tried to tug it away. "Mine now.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“What I’m trying to get at is, as bad as everything seems, I think, at its heart, life is good. It doesn’t throw anything at us that it knows we can’t handle—and, even if it takes its time, it turns everything right side up again.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“So thought crossed my mind," Liam said suddenly.
"That must've been a lonely journey," Chubs said flipping the pages of his book.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Breathing him in wasn't enough, I wanted to inhale him. The leather, the smoke, the sweetness.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“This whole time, from the moment we met, he’d been waiting for me to realize he’d known me all along, and he had never once wanted me to change.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“What?" he whispered. "What are you smiling about?"
My fingers brushed against his hair, trying to smooth it down. I realized what I was doing a full minute after Liam had closed his eyes and leaned into my touch. Embarrassment flared up my chest, but he grabbed my hand before I could pull back and tucked it under his chin.
"Nope," he whispered, when I tried to tug it away. "Mine now."
Dangerous. This is dangerous. The warning was fleeting, banished to the back corners of my mind, where it wouldn't interrupt how good it felt to touch him - how right.
"I'm going to need it back eventually," I said, letting him run it along the stubble on his chin.
"Too bad."
"...crackers..." a voice breathed out behind us, "yessss..."
Both of us turned, watching as Chubs twisted around in his seat and settled back down, still fast asleep.
I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. Liam rolled his eyes, smiling.
"He dreams about food," he said. "A lot."
"At least they're good dreams."
"Yeah," Liam agreed. "I guess he's lucky.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Just shut up and start sucking each other's faces already," Vida grumbled, leaning awkwardly against the stump. She would never admit it aloud, but I knew the burns on her back her eating her alive with pain. "I'm trying to make up for the sleep I lost when you started screeching at each other like cats in heat."
"Miss Vida," Liam said, "has anyone ever told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?"
She glared at him. "Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?"
"That is physically impossible," Chubs groused. "He'd be--"
"Actually," Liam began, "Cole once did try to-- What?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Chub said, "apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue."
"I'm going to guess you probably don't want to hear about the time he pushed my head through the neighbours fence..."
"Was there a lot of blood?" Vida asked, suddenly interested. "Did you lose an ear?"
Liam held his hands up next to his ears, indicating both were firmly attached to his skull.
"Then, no" she said. "No one wants to hear your boring-ass story.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“I'll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair."
I jerked a thumb in the direction of Chubs.
Liam only shook his head. "Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown."
I unbuckle my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Chubs's outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. " Is his eyesight really that bad?"
"Worse," Liam said. "So, right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid's baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone's head in for us to make a clean getaway. then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of a drained pool."
"No way," I said.
"Way," he confirmed. "Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn't climb out of the deep end.
I tried so hard not to laugh, but it was impossible. The mental image was just too damn good.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Don't go... where I can't follow, please, please, not again...”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Do I look as pretty as I feel?”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Jude was down there. He was down there. And the last place I would ever leave Jude was alone in the dark.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Joseph Lister?" Liam said suddenly, cutting through the silence. "Really? Him?"
Chubs stiffened beside me. "That man was a hero. He pioneered research on the origins of infections and sterilization."
Liam stared hard at the faux leather cover of just Chubs's skip-tracer ID, carefully choosing his next words. "You couldn't have chosen something cooler? Someone who is maybe not an old dead white guy?"
"His work led to the reduction of post operative infections and safer surgical practices," Chubs insisted. "Who would you have picked? Captain America?"
"Steve Rogers is a perfectly legit name." Liam pass the ID back to him. " This is all...very Boba Fett of you. I'm not sure what to say, Chubsie.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“You are actually the worst person I have ever met,” Chubs said. “And people like you are the reason we have middle fingers.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“What?” The word exploded out of me. “What do you want me to tell you? You want to hear about how they tied us up like animals to bring us into the camp—or, hey! How about that time a PSF once beat in a girl’s skull so badly she actually lost an eye? You want to know what it was like to drink rotten water for an entire summer until new pipes finally came? How I woke up afraid and went to bed in terror every single day for six years? For God’s sake, leave me alone! Why do you always have to dig and dig when you know I don’t want to talk about it?”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“She shows up everywhere, at any time, like she can guess
what we’re going to do before we do it.”
“The lady is good at what she does,” Liam confirmed.
“Can you please not compliment the person trying to drag our asses back to camp?”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Some guy on the radio called us the “lost generation” the other day. I wanted to find a payphone and a few quarters and tell that fool that we aren’t lost at all.

We’re exactly where they put us.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Rising Dark: A Darkest Minds Collection

“It doesn't make you a bad person, you know - to want to live your own life.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“I started at the beginning, the escape. Fleeing through the forest, meeting a new danger at every turn, the desperation that came with trying to protect everyone when you could barely take care of yourself. The boy with the bottomless dark eyes, the betrayal, the fire, the smoke. And by the time I realized I had told him my own story, Jude was fast asleep, tucked firmly into dreams.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Chubs didn’t have to finish. I knew what I’d been when I’d found them: a terrified splinter of a girl who had been shattered a long time ago. I had nothing, and no one, and no real place to go. Maybe I was still broken and would always be—but now, at least, I was piecing myself back together, lining up one jagged edge at a time.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Cate had told me once, a long time ago, that the only way to survive your past was to find a way to close it off behind you, to shut one door before passing into another, brighter room. I was afraid. That was the truth. I was terrified of the guilt and shame that would come flooding in when I retraced my steps, turned the lock, and found the girl I had abandoned. I didn’t want to know what the darkness there had done to her, if she would even recognize herself in my face.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“Jude was down there. He was down there. And the last place I would ever leave Jude was alone in the darl.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“A clatter of metal against the concrete made me look back. Liam had moved on from the car to a nearby pile of bikes that were tangled together like brambles. He picked through the frames and spokes and wheels, working carefully, trying to get down to whatever he'd seen under them....

"Do you actually know how to ride?"

"Do I know how to ride?" Liam scoffed, leaning over the bike's seat so his face was inches from mine. His pale blue eyes were electric with his excitement; they sent a charge through me, sizzling the rest of the world into peaceful, quiet static. That last bit of distance must have been as unbearable to him as it was to me, because his fingers came down over where my hands rested on the busted leather seat. I felt his touch spread over my skin like late afternoon sunshine. His lips skimmed my cheek, his breath warm against my ear as he said in low, honeyed tones, "Not only can I ride, darlin', but I can give you a few pointers–

"Hey, Hell's Angels!" Cole barked. "I didn't bring you in here to shop around for yourselves! Get your assess over here!"

Liam expression clouded over as he pulled back, the fluttering excitement vanishing like a candle blown out. with a single breath. I must have looked as disappointed as I felt, letting out a small sound of irritation, because just like that he was smiling again as he tucked a loose strand of hair back over my ear. A softer, smaller smile than before, but one meant for me. It warmed me down to my bones.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade

“I'm a Green," Hina said, pointing to her full head of hair. "Duh."

Liam turned toward me with a look of pure amazement. "Did I just get sassed by a twelve year old?”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Let's carpe the hell out of this diem”
― Alexandra Bracken (author)

“Better to try to live free on your own terms than die for someone else's bloody dreams.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds