Patrick Ness Quotes

Oh, it was real, all right,” she says. “We lived it; we were there. If you go through something and put up with it even if you want to get away from it more than anything in the whole world, then it was definitely bloody real.

"He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again.

"I couldn't stand the waiting anymore. I couldn't stand how alone it made me feel."

And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her.

And the nightmare began. The nightmare that always ended with -
"I let her go," Conor choked out. "I could have held on but I let her go."

And that, the monster said, is the truth.

"I didn't mean it, though!" Conor said, his voice rising. "I didn't mean to let her go! And now it's for real! Now she's going to die and it's my fault!"

And that, the monster said, is not the truth at all.

You felt the excitement when we chased them up the hill,” the Mayor's saying. “I saw it. It blazed through your Noise like a fire. Every man in the army felt the same thing. You're never more alive than in battle.”

“Never more dead after,” I say.

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.

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.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into town, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.

She tried to kill you, Viola. She tried to blow you up... You don't owe her nothing,' he says.
But I feel his arms on me and I'm realizing things don't seem so impossible anymore. I feel Todd touching me and there's anger rising in my gut but it's not at him and I grunt and I pull myself up again, leaning on him to keep me there as I stand. 'I do owe her,' I say. 'I owe her the look on her face when she sees me alive.

"Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?

"I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."

The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. 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."

Don't deceive me. Never leave me.

"But what he's forgetting," she says. "What he's forgotting is that me and Todd, we ran halfway across this planet together, by ourselves. We beat his craziest preacher. We outran an entire army and survived being shot and beaten and chased and we bloody well stayed alive this whole time without being blown up or tortured to death or dying in battle or anything."
She takes her hand of Lee so she's balancing just against me.
"Me and Todd? Together against the Mayor?" She smiles. "He doesn't stand a chance."

After he killed the farmer's daughter, said the monster, the prince lay down next to her and returned to sleep. When he awoke, he acted out a pantomime should anyone be watching. But also, it may surprise you to learn, for himself. The monster's branches creaked. Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day.

Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now.
But he was further away than ever.

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.