Patrick Ness Quotes

There's hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall." ~pg 426

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.

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.

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.

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

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

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.

We are the choices we make.

"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.

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

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

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

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

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

Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

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

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?

Don't deceive me. Never leave me.

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

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

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.

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

...and I have this stupid little thought that Aaron didn't survive the croc attack after all, that he died but he's so pissed off at me that dying didn't stop him from coming here to kill me anyway.

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.

I promised to keep on going but maybe keep on going means coming back first.

Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.

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.

if one of us falls, we all fall

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

Stories don’t always have happy endings.

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."

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

For me it is really important to have a story with blood in the veins, there are bad tempers and good tempers.

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

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.

Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.

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.

You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.

War makes monsters out of men.

And it feels like, finally.

You went up a girl and came down a woman.

I'll find you- Keep calling for me, Viola- Cuz here I come.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A knife is only as good as the one who wields it.

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.