Patricia A. McKillip Quotes

But you must stop playing among his ghosts — it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there

Men see what they are most afraid of.

The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day," he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, "and he found it again at the bottom of his heart.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.

I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.

All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.

Shall I add a man to my collection?

The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales.

But, Corbet, there were things—between us—”
“You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you.

If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can't turn back. There is now answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.
-Deth to Morgon, Prince of Hed-