Patrick Ness Quotes

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.

I think I can forgive a kind lie.

"Then at the top of the hill, the road forks.
Which just figures.
"You gotta be kidding." I say.
One part of the road goes left, the other goes right.
(Well, it's a "Fork" ain't it?)"

Is this what war is?
Is this what men want so much?
Is this sposed to make them men?

Faith with proof is no faith at all.

You said war should never be personal, but that’s all it’s ever been for me.

Smart boys make useless men.

Sometimes you just have to feel bad about a thing. Sometimes that's the only thing that makes you human.

But it's a tradition, as if that alone is reason enough. Slavery and buying your wife were traditions, too.

War is a monster...War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows...And otherwise normal people become monsters, too.

It is not her you need saving from, it said.

"TODD!" I yell again and I reach him and his Noise opens even farther and wraps around me like a blanket and I'm grabbing him to me, grabbing him to me like I'll never let him go and he calls out in pain but his other arm is grabbing me back -
"I thought you were dead," he's saying, his breath on my neck. "I thought you were dead."
"Todd," I say and I'm crying and the only thing I can say is his name. "Todd."

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.

"Yes", Kumiko said, seriously. "Exactly that. The extraordinary happens all the time. So much, we can't take it. Life and happiness and heartache and love. If we couldn't put it in story - "
"And explain it -"
"No!" she said, suddenly sharp. "Not explain. Stories do not explain. They seem to, but all they provide is a starting point. The story never ends at the end. There is always after. And even within itself, even by saying that this version is the right one, it suggests other versions, versions that exist in parallel. No, story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us." She sagged a little, as if exhausted by this speech. "As it surely, surely would."

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