How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
There was no thrill in seeing him, as she had thought there would be. All she could think was, He will be dead within a year. How did Maura bear it? (1.75)
Seeing the dead isn't as easy or fun as Blue thought it would be. Now that she knows this Gansey kid is going to die in the next year, she feels absolutely awful. After all, he's young… just like her. Why would he have to die?
Quote #2
"I've been dead for seven years," Noah said. "That's as warm as they get." (4.63-64)
Ha ha, Noah. That's a great joke. Except… Noah isn't joking at all. He's telling the bald truth when he tells people that he's been dead for seven years, but they never believe him. What's a ghost to do?
Quote #3
Noah didn't say he would go along, and Gansey didn't ask him to. Six months ago, the only time it had ever mattered, Noah had found Ronan in an introspective pool of his own blood, and so he was exempt from ever having to look again. (9.40)
Poor Noah. He's had to deal with so much death in his lifetime… and in his afterlife. It stinks for him to find Ronan after his suicide attempt, and so he avoids being in situations where he'd be the one to stumble across him again.
Quote #4
Gansey couldn't remember the last time Ronan had listened to Celtic music. Niall Lynch's music. All at once, he, too, missed Ronan's charismatic father. But more than that, he missed the Ronan that had existed when Niall Lynch had still been alive. This boy in front of him now, fragile bird in his hands, seemed like a compromise. (16.21)
Niall's death didn't just take him away from this world; it took away the Ronan that everyone knew as well. The Ronan that exists after his father's death is harder, meaner, and sadder than ever.
Quote #5
"Cavalier?" Gansey suggested. "The truth is there's not even really a point having an EpiPen. The last they told me was that it would only work if I got stung once, and even then, they don't know. I was four the first time I had to go to a hospital for a sting, and the reactions only got worse after that. It is what it is. It's this or live in a bubble." (28.67)
Death? Gansey laughs in the face of death. He at least doesn't worry enough about dying to carry around an EpiPen. If a bee stings him, he's a goner anyway, and it's easier to just accept that instead of worry all the time.
Quote #6
She asked, "Were you scared?"
He didn't have to answer. She saw it in the hollow of his eyes.
"What happened?"
"I died," he said. "I felt my heart stop. The hornets didn't care. They were still stinging me, even though I was dead." (28.84-87)
Noah's not the only one around here who has an experience with being dead. Gansey did, too, although he was able to come out of it and go on to live his life. Now he feels like he has to do something big with his life, since he was given a second chance.
Quote #7
"He's dead," Gansey said. His arms were tight over his chest. "You're really dead, aren't you?"
Noah's voice was plaintive. "I told you."
They stared at him, just feet away from Ronan. Really, he was so much less real than Ronan, Adam thought—it should have been obvious. It was ludicrous that they hadn't noticed. Ridiculous that they had not thought about his last name, about where he came from, about the classes he did or did not go to. (29.49-51)
How do you not notice that one of your best friends is a ghost? The raven boys somehow totally fail to notice that Noah is "smudgy" and not very… real. It's only when Gansey finds his long-dead body that all the pieces fall into place.
Quote #8
"This is the ritual Gansey was talking about," Adam said to Ronan. "Someone did try it. With a sacrifice as the symbolic way to touch the ley line. You were the sacrifice, weren't you, Noah? Someone killed you for this."
"My face," Noah said softly, and he turned his head away, pressing his ruined cheek into his shoulder. "I can't remember when I stopped being alive." (32.114-115)
Noah's still kind of traumatized from his death seven years ago. Being murdered by your best friend isn't exactly something that you can get over quickly.
Quote #9
Whelk lay broken. His body was covered with leaf litter, as if he'd lain there for years, not minutes. There was not as much blood as one would expect in a trampling, but there was something broken in his appearance nonetheless. A sort of rumpled look to his form. (47.2)
Well, Whelk's storyline has definitely come full circle. He first murdered someone at Cabeswater in order to wake the ley lines, and now he's died at Cabeswater after witnessing the ritual.
Quote #10
After they'd finished covering the last of the bones, they stood quietly inside the ruined walls. Blue stared at Gansey, in particular, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted down toward where they had just interred Noah. It felt like no time and all the time in the world since she'd seen his spirit walk this very path. (48.38)
Most people want the dead to rest in peace… but not Noah's friends. They'd much rather have Noah around to go exploring with them, even if it means that they're technically being haunted.