Patrick Ness Quotes

The green things of this world are just wondrous, aren't they? We work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes they're the very thing that saves us.

go in swinging

You talk like American television.

I thought I had more. I thought Gudmund was my more. It didn't matter how crap everything else was. The stuff with Owen, The stuff with my parents, even later with the stuff at school. I could live with all of that, because I had him. He was mine and no one else's. We lived in this private world, that no one else knew about and no one else ever lived in.

To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it

You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have coming walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?

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

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.

Kindness is the most important thing of all. Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle.

No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.

Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.

For there are devils in the deep,
but worst are the ones
we make.

"And still you make fun," Tomassz complains, "after I am saving your life. Again. So tell me please, your inntricate knowledge of Polish references. Yes, that would be most amusing. Long, long talk now about Polish language and the words Polish people use to feel in picturesque language."
"Where did you learn English? The 1950s?"

And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there’s room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more.

"He is sorry-
For everything-
For Prentisstown-
For Viola-
For Ben-
For every failure and every wrong-
For letting his pa down-
And he's looking up at me-
And he's begging me-
He's begging me-
Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-
Like it's only me who's got the power-
Todd?-
Please-
And all I can say is "Davy-"
And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-
It's too much-
And then it stops.
Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.
And he lies there, still.
Davy Prentiss is dead."