Top 100 Robin McKinley Quotes
#1. Sylvi wished she could gouge out the look in Dorogin's stony eyes, and change the course of history. She wished Fthoom had been eaten by a sea monster.
Robin McKinley
#2. Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.
Robin McKinley
#3. The touch of evil poisons by the idea of it. Reject the idea, and you've rejected the evil
Robin McKinley
#4. I am hurt ... in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hands and eyes and breath are a part of me.
Robin McKinley
#5. Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.
Robin McKinley
#6. Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.
Robin McKinley
#7. he followed me with his eyes as if I wore a black hood and carried an axe, and he was next in line.
Robin McKinley
#8. She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names.
Robin McKinley
#9. [Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.
Robin McKinley
#10. We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.
Robin McKinley
#11. I disliked promises on principle because my conscience made me keep them
Robin McKinley
#12. I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.
Robin McKinley
#13. I get a little cranky with the whole business about kids not having attention spans. This reminds me of the usual business of thinking that the next generation is hopeless. Every generation has said that about every younger generation.
Robin McKinley
#14. It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don't have a life.
Robin McKinley
#15. Mathin said: "It is best to take your opponent's sash. The kysin mark each blow dealt, but to cut off the other rider's sash is best. This you will do."
"Oh," said Harry.
"You may, if you wish, unhorse him first," Mathin added as an afterthought.
"Thanks," said Harry.
Robin McKinley
#16. He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.
Robin McKinley
#17. They could at least part with love. It was like Tor to make the gesture; her father, for all his kindness, was too proud - or too much a king; and she was too proud, or too bitter, or too young.
Robin McKinley
#18. If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.
Robin McKinley
#19. We had to go back to the coffeehouse: the Wreck was there. Mel had walked over. Well, I don't know about walked. He had come over without vehicular assistance anyway.
Robin McKinley
#20. Her betrothed is a lout, her father is a boor; and now her brother is trailing around looking like a thunderstorm about to burst. Men are not sensible creatures.'
'Thank you,' said Robin.
Robin McKinley
#21. I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?
Robin McKinley
#22. Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.
Robin McKinley
#23. For anyone who is: just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it'll work itself out. You just keep feeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing.
Robin McKinley
#24. The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.
Robin McKinley
#25. The bus timetable sites are all run by an inbred cabal of malicious gnomes. Who don't speak English. And who don't count very well either. Or tell time. And they certainly can't read maps.
Robin McKinley
#26. What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?
Robin McKinley
#27. Their new Master was coming home: the Master thought lost or irrecoverable. The Master who, as younger brother of the previous Master, had been sent off to the priests of Fire, to get rid of him.
Robin McKinley
#28. It's kind of interesting you're driving a car big enough for a wolfhound and a mastiff to get in the back of today," I said.
"And a greyhound, a dark brown bear, and a brindle utility vehicle," said Jill.
"Greyhounds don't take up much room," I said. "They're like dog silhouettes.
Robin McKinley
#29. My capacity for invention is flash hot stark, I thought. Sucker sunshade. Disembodied radar-reconnaissance. Not to mention Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras. Pity about the rest of me.
Robin McKinley
#31. Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.
Robin McKinley
#32. And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket.
Robin McKinley
#33. But it is not, as we say when we are being diplomatic, a fruitful source of inquiry.
Robin McKinley
#34. My father ... raised me to make up my own mind. The way he did this was by yielding to me when I asked, even when I was foolish. I lived through it; and I know my own mind; and he will do what I ask him.
Robin McKinley
#35. She thought, I need no cup. I am Chalice. I am filling with the grief and hurt and fear of my demesne; the shattered earthlines weigh me down; I am brimming with the needs of my people.
Robin McKinley
#36. There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving like a farmer's son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith.
Robin McKinley
#37. Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all of her life how to be stubborn.
Robin McKinley
#38. Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.
Robin McKinley
#39. He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills.
Robin McKinley
#40. We may not like it, but we need human friends, because we have human enemies whether we will or nay.
Robin McKinley
#41. I have a mastery of the art of worrying that is a burden to me if I may not use it.
Robin
Robin McKinley
#42. First rule: If your dog doesn't do what you want, it's your fault.
Robin McKinley
#43. I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.
Robin McKinley
#44. She had courage enough, but little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her.
Robin McKinley
#45. [Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.
Robin McKinley
#46. I will miss the horses," said Beauty a little wistfully.
"Perhaps you will become fond of the goat," said Jeweltongue. "Or even the chickens."
"Does one ever grow fond of chickens?" said Beauty dubiously. "Perhaps the goat.
Robin McKinley
#47. It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story The Book-Bag.
Robin McKinley
#48. Don't you mind being short?' she blurted. He spread his small hands and looked at them. 'I am a magician, not a princess. A pony costs less to keep than a horse, which means I can buy more books.' He paused. 'It is not always a bad thing, to be overlooked.
Robin McKinley
#49. It goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.
Robin McKinley
#50. It was nearly dawn, and the hill was white with snow. She was covered with a thick blanket of bees, and the snow lay upon them in bright broken spangles. She sat up in distress - bees cannot survive hard cold outside their hives - but they seemed to shake themselves ...
Robin McKinley
#51. Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.
Robin McKinley
#52. You did not disturb me, said the pegasus. I disturbed myself, that I might speak to you.
Robin McKinley
#53. The burden she carried was different from yours, and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy, although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.
Robin McKinley
#54. Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said: You do not have to choose.
Robin McKinley
#55. I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "But I do believe in ... loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents - happy or otherwise - and taking advantage of these.
Robin McKinley
#56. Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you
Robin McKinley
#57. When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.
Robin McKinley
#58. It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.
Robin McKinley
#59. And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.
Robin McKinley
#61. If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.
Robin McKinley
#62. What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children's or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.
Robin McKinley
#63. Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole.
Robin McKinley
#64. They are all so beautiful,' she said.
He looked down at her. 'Not half so beautiful as you are,' he said. 'Nor do they speak to me, nor touch me. Even Fourpaws will not touch me. Beauty, will you marry me?
Robin McKinley
#65. He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.
Robin McKinley
#66. Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true.
- Luthe
Robin McKinley
#67. There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance.
Robin McKinley
#68. I thought, I have been so tired, these last two months. I have got used to that too. I have told myself it is just part of - having had what happened, happen. You do not get over something like that quickly. I had told myself that was all it was. I had almost believed it. I had believed it.
Robin McKinley
#69. But with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other.
Robin McKinley
#70. In fact, she would have added the rider that she wasn't sure it could be done at all, getting to know someone at any succession of such parties, however prolonged.
Robin McKinley
#71. And everybody dreams about vampires; we grow up dreaming about them. They're the first and worst monster that lives under everybody's bed.
Robin McKinley
#72. What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing
a very hard thing ... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?
Robin McKinley
#73. She'd found she couldn't bring herself to kill any of her bees, which was the system all the northern demesnes used, and so had to get them through the winter somehow. She'd been cold that winter herself, after wrapping up her most exposed hives in all the blankets she had.
Robin McKinley
#74. Fairy godmothers?" said the king dubiously. "We'll have a time getting that past the court council - and the bishop.
Robin McKinley
#75. One has various things in the back of one's mind. Occasionally an opportunity presents itself to bring one forward. Most of these opportunities come to nothing. Once in a very great while one
or two
do come to something.
Robin McKinley
#76. Stop it. This is me, remember? We've been thrown up by the same puppies. - Ossin
Robin McKinley
#77. It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind. It had never occurred to me that leaving someone alone could harden into a habit that could become a barrier.
Robin McKinley
#78. I almost wish I'd had the forethought to eat a tree myself.
Robin McKinley
#79. Perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it.
Robin McKinley
#80. Balthazar was disappointed by all the walking, but he was accustomed to such disappointment.
-Hellhound
Robin McKinley
#81. But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.
Robin McKinley
#82. The world turned, and new stories rose up, and the legends of the old days faltered a little, or turned themselves in their course to keep up with the lives of their people, and the lives of great-grandchildren of those they had first known.
Robin McKinley
#83. [the sheep] sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. "I am sorry, you ugly creature," he said. "I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.
Robin McKinley
#84. One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.
Robin McKinley
#85. It was of grey stone, huge block set on block;but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin's back at dawn.
Robin McKinley
#86. Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not.
Robin McKinley
#87. It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.
Robin McKinley
#88. I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on.
Robin McKinley
#89. Never assume. Never make plans. Keep doing the press-ups and deep knee bends: you'll need all your strength and flexibility when your life suddenly implodes. Maybe it won't - some people do lead enchanted lives - but odds are that it will. Some time.
Robin McKinley
#90. The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?
Robin McKinley
#91. screen that was longing to give me a lightning-bolt-thunder-roll odin-bloody headache
Robin McKinley
#92. Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.
Robin McKinley
#93. The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.
Robin McKinley
#94. She fell asleep, leaning on his chest, and he edged her a little off a particularly painful bruise, leaned his head back against the tree he had propped them up against, and closed his own eyes.
Robin McKinley
#95. Robin: I'm sure you've learnt to bake, but you have not learned to handle Much. The phrases that you need my lady, are "No", "No you can't", and "No, get out of here before I throw something at you".
Robin McKinley
#96. I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references.
Robin McKinley
#97. I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood ...
I was raving, if only to myself.
Robin McKinley
#98. This place felt like home; not her home perhaps, but someone's home, accustomed to shelter and keep and befriend its master.
Robin McKinley
#99. I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?
Robin McKinley
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