Garth Nix Quotes

When the Dead do walk, seek water’s run,
For this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river’s best or broadest lake
To ward the Dead and haven make.
If water fails thee, fire’s thy friend;
If neither guards, it will be thy end.

"Oh, to be a minion," muttered Giac to himself dreamily. "I was a sub-minion."

"You are a weak reed, Recruit Green!" Helve shouted. "Weak reeds make for badly woven baskets! This platoon will not be a badly woven basket!"

I’ll sing you a song of the long ago -
Seven shine the shiners, oh!
What did the Seven do way back when?
Why, they wove the Charter then!
Five for the warp, from beginning to end.
Two for the woof, to make and mend.
That’s the Seven, but what of the Nine-
What of the two who chose not to shine?
The Eighth did hide, hide all away,
But the Seven caught him and made him pay.
The Ninth was strong and fought with might,
But lone Orannis was put out of the light,
Broken in two and buried under hill,
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.

"You mean he's dead too?" asked Suzy. "Yes," said Dusk. "This morning, in his cell. The guards outside were also slain, and only Sir Thursday's boots remained." "Sounds more like he escaped," Suzy said. "His feet were still in the boots," said Dusk.

"Am I correct in assuming that I address Lord Arthur?" "Yes, I'm Arthur." Emelena mumbled something that Arthur correctly thought was about expecting him to be taller, more impressive, have lightning bolts coming out of his eyes, and so on.

Gold-Eye's Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasantly close future, the soon-to-be-now. Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Gold-Eye's own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiraled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to the pile of blankets... Gold-Eye didn't wait to see more. He came out of the vision and took the escape route he'd planned months before, when he'd first found the carriage. Lifting a trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

"What happened?" Arthur asked. He caught a glimpse of something below, but couldn't quite make out what it was. "The Nithling-" "Missed me," called out Suzy. "Close-run thing. Bit off my right clog. I was kicking it in the teeth, so I s'pose that's fair."

All of us recruits are equal in the eyes of the Army: low as you can go.

Double, treble, quadruple bubble, watch the stock market get into trouble...

"No!" shouted Arthur. "What's wrong with you? They're people! You can't just kill hundreds or thousands of Piper's children because the Piper might... just might... make some of them do something!" "Can't we?" asked Dame Primus. She sounded genuinely puzzled.

"I don't... I don't care," he said softly to his reflection. "I have a job to do. It doesn't matter what I have become. It doesn't matter what I look like."

Teachers are very undervalued for what they do.

"I don't want to make a mistake," said the Will softly. "Better not to make a decision than to make a mistake." "The whole House is going to fall down if you don't make a decision!" Arthur argued.

"Thank you for splitting. I guess we'd all better get on with it." "Indeed," said Dame Quarto. "We had," added Dame Septum. She raised her hand and dramatically announced, "I shall attend to the Middle House!" "And I to the mountains!" declared Dame Quarto, and both strode from the room. "And I to... sorting our Superior Saturday," said Arthur. Somehow it didn't sound the same.