Patrick ness quotes

No,' Ben says, 'but I believe it. I believe it for you. And that's why it's hope.

So the good prince was a murderer and the evil queen wasn't a witch after all.

It's always nice when two people who don't got no one else find each other as friends.

If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.

Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don't have to think that you might ever do these things. I don't think that's true

The ability to make fire at will. It allowed us light to see in the darkness, warmth against the cold, a tool to cook our food.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Delta’s engines. ‘Fire is what eventually led to travel across the black beyond, the ability to start a new life on a New World.

Do you not wonder sometimes, she showed now, sadly, if in some ways they are correct? That we are asking too much of the world?"No," he said. "They're the ones who are asking for too little."

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.

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.

You're never more alive than in battle." "Never more dead after," I say.

Didn't you finish your chemistry in school?" "You closed the school and burnt all the books." "Ah, so I did.

I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it.

It's not the mistakes I made but how I responded to them

Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward. “You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.

He was still alive. Which was the worst thing that could have happened.

To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.

And then a low and powerful sound rumbles thru the sky, like some giant, deep horn. A sound God would make when he wanted yer attenshun.

if one of us falls, we all fall

Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

Viola? Keep calling for me– And I’ll keep searching for you– And I’ll find you– You bet yer life on it– I’ll find you– Keep calling for me, Viola– Cuz here I come.

The sound when we crash is so loud it's almost impossible.

I think maybe everyone falls... I think the asking is whether we get back up again.

Faith with proof is no faith at all.

Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.

And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing. Each of us knowing the other.

I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.

And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.

A thing worth learning is worth learning well.

No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.

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?

Superior numbers versus superior firepower. A recipe for unending slaughter.

And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most

"Poo" Manchee barks quielty to himself. "Poo, poo, poo." "Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it."

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.

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

We are the choices we make.

...That it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?" ~pg 423

Midnight passes and I'm twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.

Don't deceive me. Never leave me.

Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.

And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.

Everything that's happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.

Conor held tightly onto his mother. And by doing so, he could finally let her go.

We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again.

What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down.

Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.

In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything. "Need a poo, Todd." "Shutup, Manchee." "Poo. Poo, Todd." "I said shut it."

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.

"Stories don't always have happy endings." This stopped him. Because they didn't, did they? That's one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.

You tell a man the truth about himself and, well, they find they have trouble accepting it.

This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.

And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.

Sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You'd be surprised.

Know yourself and go in swinging, if it hurts when you hit, it might be real, too.

Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.” “But if you don't at least try to live them,” Bradley says, “then there's no point in living at all.

"No," he says, taking us both in. "No, no, no. You've come farther than most people on this planet will in their lifetimes. You've overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should've killed you. You've outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn't have hope?"

That's the thing I'm learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don't change it, it don't get changed.

The green things of this world are just wondrous, aren’t they?” his mother went on. “We work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes they’re the very thing that saves us.

That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.

Guessing a thing ain't knowing a thing.

Stories don’t end with the writers, however many started the race.

Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world changes, whether I want it to or not.

It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again.

We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.

But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.

Do we hate paradise so much we need to make sure it becomes a trash heap?

Schooling ain't life." "Ain't it?" she says, her eyebrows raising in mock surprise.

I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.

Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.

Here I am. Here we are. Here we go. Here is all that matters.

We are the choices we make. And have to make. We aren’t anything else.

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.

No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky’s too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?’ ‘And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there’s so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don’t get any work done because we’re all looking at it too much?

We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.

We just keep on having to save each other", he says. "We ever gonna be even?" "I hope not," I say

And changing for the better doesn't mean that he's ever going to reach good.

Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

Teenagers are the greatest readers in the world - honest, unsnobby and loyal

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.

There's so much wonder in the world. Don't let no one tell you otherwise.

You are keeping the possibility [of peace] open. No wise leader would do anything less

Here is the boy, drowning.

The only place you belong is the place you can never go back. And so yer always alone, forever and always.

There's always beauty, if you know where to look.

It's always darkest before the dawn, Todd.” I look at him, baffled. “No, it ain't! What kinda stupid saying is that? It's always lightest before the dawn!

Time goes on, even when yer not looking.

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.

People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.

Stories don’t always have happy endings.

Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "I think maybe everybody falls," I say. "I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking." I pull on her arms gently to make sure she's listening. "I think the asking is whether we get back up again.

Like how stars might sound. Or moons But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It's a sound like one planet singing to another, high stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that's sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word. One word.

Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

Know yourself and go in swinging.

Librarians open up the world. Knowledge is useless if you don't even know where to begin to look. How much more can you discover when someone can point you in the right direction, when someone can maybe even give you a treasure map, to places you may not have even thought you were allowed to go? This is what librarians do.

You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.

Stories are important...They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.

But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.

Why can't we learn to live with how we are? And whatever anybody chooses is okay by the rest of us?

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.

Life ain't fair. It ain't. Not never. It's pointless and stupid and there's only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can't love nothing or no one cuz it'll all be taken away or ruined and you'll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive.

Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.

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.

Now that I've seen her, I can't stop seeing her.

And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside me. And i fall back into it.

Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

Things change, but they stay the same.

It was solitude, but it was solitude that wasn't lonely. Solitude that could sort things out. And he hadn't had that in ages.

And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.

Francia don’t look too convinced. I never seen arms so crossed.

It’s a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that’s what gets lost in all that Noise.

Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions'-- 'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky. 'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.

Viola blows out a thoughtful air. "My dad used to say, 'There's only forward, Vi, only outward and up.'" "There's only forward," I repeat. "Outward and up," she says.

War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.

... a good idea always attracts other good ideas.

A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

We can save the world," I say, trying to smile. "You and me.

If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean.

There ain't nothing good that don't got real bad waiting to follow it.

The only crime, the only crime is to take a life. There is nothing else.' 'And that's why you don't fight,'I say. She turns to me sharply. 'To preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.