Patrick Ness Quotes

But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”
“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”
“Lee — ”
“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.
I’d do it for you too, Lee’s Noise says.
And I know he would.
But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?
So who’s right?

It just felt like she'd been born with a small flaw, right at the centre of herself, a flaw somehow too shameful to be shown to anyone else, so she'd spent her life building a carapace around it to keep it hidden. Inevitably, the carapace became her true self, a fact she could never quite see, a fact that might have offered relief. Because all she knew was the truth deep inside of her, the little something wrong no one else could ever, ever know. And if that wasn't the real her, then what was? At her core, she was broken, and life was just one long attempt to distract people from noticing.

But that's the risk, isn't it? Being the best gives you nowhere to go but down. It also makes you a target, for if someone else wants to be the best, they have to beat you, don't they?

We are the choices we make. And have to make. We aren’t anything else.

You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know.

And then his noise falls completely silent-

And he stops struggling-

And looking right into my eyes-

He dies.

My Todd dies.

He was the thing the world had suffered from most in her four billion years of existence: a stupid man with power.

Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

Everything's always ending. But everything's always beginning, too

"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 starting to feel hope yet?" Viola asks, her voice curious.
"No," I say, fuddling my noise. "You?"
Her eyebrows are up but she shakes her head. "No, No."
"But we're going anyway."
"Oh, yeah," Viola says. "Hell or high water."
"It'll probably be both," I say.

What else do men think about except sex and enemies?

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.

His last word had been my name. The last word he heard was me speaking his own. Did this mean anything? And if it only meant something for the two of us, did that reduce it?

HELP!”
I race to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out-
No.
No.
It’s empty.
Viola’s breathing heavy in my arms .
And Haven is empty.
I reach the middle of the square.
I don’t see nor hear a soul.
I spin around again.
“HELP!” I cry.
But there’s no one.
Haven’s completely empty.
There ain’t hope here after all.