Patrick Ness Quotes

No one wanted to hear that people other than themselves might be complicated, that no one was ever just one thing, no history ever just one version.

Because an idea lives on after the death of the person.

La creencia es la mitad de la curación.

It is not what I want from you, Conor O’Malley, it said. It is what you want from me.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Conor said.
Not yet, said the monster. But you will.

And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

What a sad thing men are. Can't do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can't build something without tearing it down.
It ain't the Spackle that drove us to the end.
It was ourselves.

Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

"What did you do to help the invisible man?"
And he felt the monster's voice again, like it was in his own head.
I made them see, it said.

The devil tells the best stories.

"The parson refused to believe the Apothecary could help, said the monster. When times were easy, the parson nearly destroyed the Apothecary, but when the going grew tough, he was willing to throw aside every belief if it would save his daughters.

"So?" Conor said. "So would anyone! So would everyone! What did you expect him to do?

Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you’ve got to do is find a way to live there.

When you predict the future, when you do so strongly and you cling to it, how much of that future do you then cause to happen?

Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions' — 'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky.
'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.

It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.