Patrick Ness
41 quotes
Biography
"You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do."
"It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.It's not a weakness.It's your best strength."
"Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth."
"Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"
"Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you’ve got to do is find a way to live there."
"We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy."
"Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day."
"You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know."
"Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway."
"Ow, Todd? Ow?"
"And she says, “Then let’s just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.”I smile, a little. “You said effing,” I say. “You actually said the word effing."
"So we forgive each other?"The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?"And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say."Always,"I say to him. "Every time."
"People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy."
"Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life."
"And then his noise falls completely silent-And he stops struggling-And looking right into my eyes-He dies.My Todd dies."
"Who cares even if I didn't?!"Conor shouted back. "They're just stupid berries. Woo-hoo, so scary. Oh, please, please, save me from the berries!"The monster looked at him quizzically. How strange, it said. The words you say tell me you are scared of the berries, but your actions seems to suggest otherwise."
"HELP!”I race to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out-No.No.It’s empty.Viola’s breathing heavy in my arms .And Haven is empty.I reach the middle of the square.I don’t see nor hear a soul.I spin around again.“HELP!” I cry.But there’s no one.Haven’s completely empty.There ain’t hope here after all."
"... a good idea always attracts other good ideas."
"Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge."
"I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"
"A good idea always attracts other good ideas."
"There is a brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"
"Who am I? I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable!"
"Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle."
"But what is a dream, Conor O'Malley? Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?"