Top 100 Patrick Ness Quotes
#1. There's a bunch od huge churchs clustered together, trying to blend in with all the family-themed restaurants, because salvation is as easy as chicken wings, I guess.
Patrick Ness
#2. It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.
Patrick Ness
#3. Oh, yeah?" Seth says, growing angry. "How did you die again? Freak accident falling down the stairs?
Patrick Ness
#4. He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.
Patrick Ness
#5. His grandma wouldn't be here when his father arrived. Which suited everyone.
Patrick Ness
#6. I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it.
Patrick Ness
#7. We can save the world," I say, trying to smile. "You and me.
Patrick Ness
#8. Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don't have to think that you might ever do these things. I don't think that's true
Patrick Ness
#10. Whereas the town knows all about you already and wants to know more and wants to beat you with what it knows till how can you have any of yourself left at all?" ~pg 11
Patrick Ness
#11. Cuz that's it -
That's the nasty, nasty secret of war -
When yer winning -
When yer winning, it's effing thrilling -
Patrick Ness
#12. Sometimes the people don't know what's best for them ... Sometimes the people have to be convinced of things that are necessary. That's what leadership is. Not shouting your head off in support of their every whim.
Patrick Ness
#13. We would do what we must. The world is big. Surely there is a space in it for one like you and one like me.
Patrick Ness
#14. But the thing about good ideas is that they grow other ideas.
Patrick Ness
#15. You can eff off, too, I say, except I don't say eff, I say what 'eff' stands for.
Patrick Ness
#16. 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.
Patrick Ness
#17. We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.
Patrick Ness
#18. 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.
Patrick Ness
#19. We're just as screwed up and brave and false and loyal and wrong and right as anyone else.
Patrick Ness
#20. Just cuz yer going there and I'm staying here," I say. "It don't mean we're parting."
"No," she says and I know she understands. "No, it certainly doesn't."
"I ain't parting from you again," I say, still looking at our fingers. "Not even in my head.
Patrick Ness
#21. We just keep on having to save each other", he says. "We ever gonna be even?"
"I hope not," I say
Patrick Ness
#23. We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.
Patrick Ness
#24. There's always a choice," Viola says by my side.
"Oh, people like to say that," the Mayor says. "It makes them feel better.
Patrick Ness
#25. Everyone thinks they know better. Everyone.
Patrick Ness
#26. But I will say also on yer first day that the attractiveness of power is something you should learn about before you get too much older, it's the thing that separates men from boys, tho not in the way most men think.
Patrick Ness
#27. But it's obvious since the beginning that wars make no sense. You kill people to tell them you want to stop killing them.
Patrick Ness
#28. A little knowledge could be a large comfort.
Patrick Ness
#29. I have had as many names as there are years to time itself! roared the monster. I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!
Patrick Ness
#30. You know that is not true, the monster said. You know that your truth, the one that you hide, Conor O'Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of.
Patrick Ness
#31. Poo" Manchee barks quielty to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."
"Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it.
Patrick Ness
#32. Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn't stand it one longer.
Patrick Ness
#33. We have lost the idea that something can be secret because it is valuable, not because it's shameful. If you share everything with everybody, what have you got for yourself? I tweet and I blog, but I save a lot for myself. Not because I am ashamed.
Patrick Ness
#34. What are you?" Conor asked, pulling his arms closer around himself. I am not a "what," frowned the monster. I am a "who." "Who are you, then?" Conor said. The monster's eyes widened. Who am I? it said, its voice getting louder. Who am I? The
Patrick Ness
#35. But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.
Patrick Ness
#36. I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month's time exactly.
Patrick Ness
#37. Along the edge of this green lived a man. His name is not important, as no one ever used it. The villagers only ever called him the Apothecary.
Patrick Ness
#38. 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?)
Patrick Ness
#39. They want us a bit dumb and a bit afraid. Which for the most part, I think we are.
Patrick Ness
#40. You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.
Patrick Ness
#41. It'll make you look rugged,' Mel says.
'Because I woke up this morning,' I say, 'and the one thing I realized I lacked was ruggedness.
Patrick Ness
#42. There wasn't anything more, and the one good thing that was mine wasn't mine after all.
Patrick Ness
#43. I know everything about you. What you hide. What you dream.
Patrick Ness
#44. You do not write your life with words ... You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.
Patrick Ness
#45. Never trust a politician, Todd. They have no fixed center, so you can never believe them.
Patrick Ness
#46. 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.
Patrick Ness
#47. He wanted something, he realizes now. Wanted an answer other than the ones he'd been given. Wanted to find out this whole world had some purpose, some particular purpose. For him.
Patrick Ness
#48. This is it. This is goodbye. A goodbye I wasn't even looking for.
Patrick Ness
#50. And then a low and powerful sound rumbles thru the sky, like some giant, deep horn.
A sound God would make when he wanted yer attenshun.
Patrick Ness
#51. In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that's not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I'm still mostly American, but it's a nice tension.
Patrick Ness
#52. Oh, forget it," he says with feeling. "Nobody knows anything.
Patrick Ness
#53. Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.
Patrick Ness
#55. He knew it would come, and soon, maybe even this 12:07. The moment she would slip from his grasp, no matter how tightly he held on.
Patrick Ness
#56. When the monster struck a blow, Conor felt the sting of it in his own fist. When the monster held Harry's arm behind his back, Conor had felt Harry's muscles resisting.
Resisting, but not winning.
Because how could a boy beat a monster?
Patrick Ness
#57. Happiness is precious, and so I prefer to keep mine private. In a world where everyone shares everything, I can think of a lot of happy moments, but they're mine.
Patrick Ness
#59. Libraries are not facing crisis, they are in crisis.
Patrick Ness
#60. So we forgive each other?" The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?"
And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say.
"Always," I say to him. "Every time.
Patrick Ness
#61. Nobody has to tell nobody nothing," I say, taking another step forward.
"You never were a poet, were you, Todd?" he says.
Patrick Ness
#62. Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.
Patrick Ness
#63. We sure as ruddy heck ain't in Prentisstown no more, I say to Manchee under my breath.
Patrick Ness
#64. Funny how you can forget that every family isn't like yours.
Patrick Ness
#65. Anything that anybody wants to give me is great! I've had folk songs, heavy metal songs, jewellery ... I would never call anything any fan gives me weird, as it's how people express what they like about the books, what it means to them, and that's a wonderful thing.
Patrick Ness
#66. Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn't the story I want to tell. At all.
You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I'm choosing my own story.
Because if you can't do that, you might as well just give up.
Patrick Ness
#67. ("This is all sounding pretty fairy tale-ish," Conor said, suspiciously.)
(You would not say that if you heard the screams of a man killed by a spear, said the monster. Or his cries of terror as he was torn to pieces by wolves. Now be quiet.)
Patrick Ness
#68. People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.
Patrick Ness
#69. You said war should never be personal, but that's all it's ever been for me.
Patrick Ness
#70. Because I'm not blind to how Harry works, you know," she said. "A bully with charisma and top marks is still a bully." She sighed, annoyed. "He'll probably end up Prime Minister one day. God help us all.
Patrick Ness
#71. Whatever the world looks like now. That's not always how it's going to look. There's more. There's always more.
Patrick Ness
#72. Roads is never the fastest way to get nowhere," the woman says. "Don't ye know that?
Patrick Ness
#73. The thing is, Todd, people don't really want freedom, no matter how much they might bleat on about it.
Patrick Ness
#75. If the infeckshun from the band takes Viola," I say, "you'll beg me to kill you after what I'll do to you."
"I believe you," says the Mayor.
Patrick Ness
#76. 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.
Patrick Ness
#77. WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON?" I roar, but I don't say "eff", now do I? Cuz it seems the situashun calls for something a little stronger. "WHAT EFFING PLAN?
Patrick Ness
#78. What else do men think about except sex and enemies?
Patrick Ness
#79. This is why I came walking, to tell you this so that you may heal. You must listen. Conor swallowed again. "I'm listening." You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do. There
Patrick Ness
#80. Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.
Patrick Ness
#81. Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree.
Patrick Ness
#82. Do we hate paradise so much we need to make sure it becomes a trash heap?
Patrick Ness
#83. Teenagers are the greatest readers in the world - honest, unsnobby and loyal
Patrick Ness
#85. Oblivion is purgatorial and grey. He is passably conscious, not asleep but not quite awake either, as if disconnected from everything, unable to move or think or receive input, able to exist.
Patrick Ness
#86. But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.
Patrick Ness
#87. When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.
Patrick Ness
#88. I am everything untamed and untameable! It brought Conor up close to its eye. I am this wild earth, come for you, Conor O'Malley.
Patrick Ness
#89. but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too.
Patrick Ness
#90. I did not come to heal her, the monster said. I came to heal you.
Patrick Ness
#91. I meet blind and partially-sighted young readers all the time, and it's a shock that so few books are available to them.
Patrick Ness
#92. In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.
Patrick Ness
#93. Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.
Patrick Ness
#94. Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It's the worst kind of regret.
Patrick Ness
#95. Better the devil you know.
I wonder why the only choice is twixt two devils, tho.
Patrick Ness
#96. It's like he's my family, except better, because I've chosen him.
Patrick Ness
#97. No," I say firmly. "If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.
Patrick Ness
#98. Four lines, and the world went quiet.
I'm sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.
I miss being your friend, read the second.
Are you okay? read the third.
I see you, read the fourth, with the I underlined about a hundred times.
Patrick Ness
#99. They're weak and strong and they make mistakes, like anyone, like he has. And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there's room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more. More and more and more. Sometimes
Patrick Ness
#100. 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.
Patrick Ness
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