Kathe Koja Quotes

#1. You see, that hunger inside us, that ambition, or whatever you may choose to call it, is a compass really, a compass of true desire. And if you will be happy, you must follow that desire, no matter which way the needle points.

Kathe Koja

#2. I never consciously choose what I'm going to work on next; I don't have an agenda beyond that attraction. Fortunately, my wonderful agent, Christopher Schelling, knows how I think and points me toward things I might like, which is how I started writing Y.A.

Kathe Koja

#3. The verge, he likes to say. That's where we want them, the utter, utter verge.

Kathe Koja

#4. People react differently to puppets than they do to human performers: they become more playful, more open.

Kathe Koja

#5. Y.A. wasn't really a specific genre when I was fifteen, but if it was, I would probably have shunned it; I was a huge snob.

Kathe Koja

#6. [Lindsay] But I don't want to think about all that now, Boring Blake and his broken heart which is really his deflated dick, that's all he cares about anyway...

Kathe Koja

#7. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

#8. We've been brainwashed into believing that it's a sin to discriminate. But discrimination doesn't mean racism; it means telling unlike things apart. Iowa grandpas and nine-year-old girls from Ohio are simply not looking to visit 'a painful chastisement upon the Western infidels.

Bill Maher

#9. The stage is not only a world apart, it is a myriad of worlds, and in those worlds a man can have anything he fancies, if only he believes in what he sees.

Kathe Koja

#10. I knew that change was coming, the way you know things you can't see, by feeling them; by instinct. The way the bees know everything they know.

Kathe Koja

#11. If it were a trick, I'd promise you safety. I'd offer you happiness. I don't know if that exists in the Barrel, but you'll find none of it with me.
For some reason, those words had comforted her. Better terrible truths than kind lies.

Leigh Bardugo

#12. If there is any God in this world, He lives in a theatre.

Kathe Koja

#13. Flowers say you're sorry.
A date says you've learnt your lesson.
A diamond says both the above.
All three and you're making her suspicious.

Saleem Sharma

#14. To work and work and never mind why; if you kept looking for the why behind everything you might never work again, you might never bother to breathe again.

Kathe Koja

#15. If it weren't for people that stand out, this whole world would be really, really boring.

Demi Lovato

#16. Even an empty road leads somewhere, right?

Kathe Koja

#17. Eyes and Priests Bear no Jests.

Benjamin Franklin

#18. How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.

Dean Koontz

#19. If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap.

Kathe Koja

#20. I have one rule when adapting any text: nothing gets added; all the words are the original author's own. But in the ordering and recreation of the story, I can do as I please, and to me, the heart and the point of 'Dracula' is appetite.

Kathe Koja

#21. Happiness, to me, was no different than Mom's paprikalaced domino bars: something that looked sweet until you took a bite, and then made you want to vomit.

Jerry Stahl

#22. The fear of hell is the basis for the Christian faith.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

#23. I'm just going to jump and say:hey Mom, Dad, I'm gay, What's for dessert?

Kathe Koja

#24. 'Alice in Wonderland' has been done a million times; why do it again? Nerve's answer is that Alice is Everyman and Everywoman, going through the stages of life.

Kathe Koja

#25. It's one thing to be given a big boxful of theory and quite another to make an engine out of it.

Alastair Reynolds

#26. Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position.

Robert A. Caro

#27. My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.

Kathe Koja