Top 100 Malorie Blackman Quotes
#1. Any anxieties publishers have about putting a child on the front cover of a book who isn't white is very old fashioned.
Malorie Blackman
#2. A backup plan means somewhere in my head, I think I might fail and that word is not in my vocabulary. Plus I'm too talented to fail.
Malorie Blackman
#3. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like 'love thy neighbor' and ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If nothing else, wasn't the message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves 'God's chosen' and still treat us the way they did?
Malorie Blackman
#4. Jude's rule number five: Never get to close to anyone or anything that you can't walk away at a moment's notice if you have to.
When you have to.
Malorie Blackman
#5. Don't you know that boys don't cry?' Adam grinned.
'Shall I tell you something I've only recently discovered,' I replied, not attempting to hide the tears rolling down my face and not the least bit ashamed of them. 'Boys don't cry, but real men do.
Malorie Blackman
#6. I mean you're cute, but not that cute. Would Rhea really risk life in a maximum security detention unit just so that she could press herself against your manly body?
Malorie Blackman
#7. A yawning hole deep inside me was begging to be filled up with words and thoughts and ideas and facts and fictions.
Callum McGregor
Malorie Blackman
#8. I don't believe in regrets. There are a few things I'd do differently, but I can't go back in time and redo them, however much I might wish to. All I can do is learn from past mistakes and move forward.
Malorie Blackman
#9. You have the same smile, the same shaped eyes, the same way of tilting your head to listen, the same stubborn streak, the same common sense. Lots of things about you and him are the same.
Malorie Blackman
#10. I can't stop thinking about what might have been ... I can't stop imagining the two of us together. My body burns at the thought of it. Sephy and I might've been together for ever.
- Callum McGregor
Malorie Blackman
#11. Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.
Malorie Blackman
#14. I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well.
Malorie Blackman
#15. When I was a child, we used to look forward to the end of the day when we would hear another ten minutes of a story.
Malorie Blackman
#16. Did you love Melanie?" asked Adam unexpectedly.
There was no pause before I shook my head.
"That's a shame," said Adam.
"Why?"
"Well, someone as special as your daughter should've been ... made with love.
Malorie Blackman
#17. We need more people working in the publishing industry itself who are people of colour.
Malorie Blackman
#18. I believe each individual can have a say and make a difference.
Malorie Blackman
#20. People are people. We'll always find a way to mess up, doesn't matter who's in charge.
Malorie Blackman
#23. You're not fifteen any more. You're not the idealistic kid who thought that, deep down, somewhere, somehow, in some way, life had to be fair.
- Callum McGregor
Malorie Blackman
#24. What was it about the differences in others that scared some people so much?
Malorie Blackman
#25. Was that all love did for you? Made you give up and give in? Left you open to pain and hurt?
Malorie Blackman
#26. Who did it, Sephy?' She repeated. 'Who beat you up? 'Cause whoever it was, I'll kill them.
Malorie Blackman
#27. What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens - I wanted teenagers to come up with their own creative responses to literature - using books themselves as a starting point.
Malorie Blackman
#28. I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society.
Malorie Blackman
#29. But remember this if nothing else: I love you more than there are words or stars. I love you more than there are thoughts and feelings. I love you more than there are seconds or moments gone or to come. I love you.
Malorie Blackman
#30. I personally, as a teenager, didn't like books I felt were trying to preach to me ... I did not believe in happy endings. I wanted to read books which reflected life as I thought I knew it.
Malorie Blackman
#32. He pulls the hood over my head. I try to pull back. I'm not trying to run away. I just want to see her ... One last time ...
Malorie Blackman
#33. Temptation leans on the doorbell, but opportunity knocks only once.
Malorie Blackman
#34. I work in my attic, and the view is next door's chimney stack.
Malorie Blackman
#35. Being the Children's Laureate has been educational, sometimes hectic, but most of all, great fun.
Malorie Blackman
#36. I think fan fiction is the way most writers start, and the same goes for music and design.
Malorie Blackman
#37. Lynny's solution was better. Just fade out, until you were ready to fade back in.
Malorie Blackman
#39. I loved reading when I grew up but did feel totally invisible because I couldn't see myself and my life reflected in the books I was reading.
Malorie Blackman
#40. The worst thing about being the laureate has been the attitude of a tiny minority of adults who haven't liked some of the things I'm supposed to have said and who have used it as an opportunity to be verbally abusive and nasty, but I haven't let it rule my world!
Malorie Blackman
#41. I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it's not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself?
Malorie Blackman
#42. What I would like to do is make sure every primary school child has a library card, so where parents don't get their children library cards, we'll see if we can get schools to step in and make sure that every child has one.
Malorie Blackman
#43. And just like that, I'd been assessed and judged. Nurse Fashoda didn't know the first thing about me but she'd taken one look at my face and now she reckoned she knew my whole life story
what had gone before and what was yet to come.
Malorie Blackman
#44. I suppose it doesn't occur to you that I can think the system just as unjust as you do.
Malorie Blackman
#45. Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this creative spark is left to flicker precariously and sometimes fade entirely.
Malorie Blackman
#46. My rear end was blood-raw from my so called brilliant ideas rebounding on me.
Malorie Blackman
#47. Thoughts can creep up on you, or they can hit harder than a wrecking ball.
Malorie Blackman
#48. I didn't even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn't afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local library reading as much as I could and getting out as many books as I could.
Malorie Blackman
#49. Don't hate me for wanting to change the way things are. I believe in you, Callum. You can change the world, I know you can. But not like this, I'm not trying to be magnanimous or patronizing. I genuinely want to help but ...
Malorie Blackman
#50. Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.
Malorie Blackman
#51. There are no such things as friends. Just acquaintances who haven't let you down yet.
Malorie Blackman
#52. Love was like an avalanche, with Sephy and I hand-in-hand racing like hell to get out of it's way-only, instead of running away from it, we kept running straight towards it.
Malorie Blackman
#53. Like a window had been thrown open inside my head and my heart, where there had been closed shutters before.
Malorie Blackman
#54. I suppose I've always lived in my own head. I didn't discover boys till sixth form. Then suddenly it was, 'Oh! Boys!'
Malorie Blackman
#56. You're a Nought and I'm a Cross and there's nowhere for us to be, nowhere for us to go where we'd be left in peace ... That's why I started crying. That's why I couldn't stop. For all the things we might've had and all the things we're never going to have.
Malorie Blackman
#57. What I'm trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that's wonderful; if you don't, that's wonderful as well.
Malorie Blackman
#58. Books and knowledge don't make for a safe world. Just the opposite. Books and knowledge are facets of the truth and the truth can be very dangerous.
Malorie Blackman
#59. Even if we had gone away together when I wanted us to, we would've been together for a year, maybe two. But sooner or later, other people would've found a way to wedge us apart.
Malorie Blackman
#60. What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place.
Malorie Blackman
#61. Because my mum and dad brought me up to believe that people are different but equal. And that I should treat everyone, no matter who, with the same respect I'd like to be shown.
Malorie Blackman
#63. If you're naive - which means immature, inexperienced, or a bit thick - you get eaten alive.
Malorie Blackman
#64. Noughts... Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn't a name we'd chosen for ourselves. It was a name we'd been given.
Malorie Blackman
#65. I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.
Malorie Blackman
#67. I wish ... I wish he wasn't quite so ashamed of me. And if he could stop feeling so ashamed of himself, then maybe we might stand a chance.
Malorie Blackman
#68. I hope to instill, in every child I meet, my love and enthusiasm for reading and stories.
Malorie Blackman
#69. The media called us ruthless terrorists. We're not. We're just fighting for what's right. Being born a nought shouldn't automatically slam shut myriad doors before you've even drawn your first breath.
Malorie Blackman
#70. We were comfort kissing, that's all. We wrapped our arms around each other for solace. Bear hugging. Squeezing the life out of each other as if we were trying to merge together. When at last we loosened our grip, in a strange way we were both more calm. Physically, at least. Not mentally.
Malorie Blackman
#71. The single yellow diamond stud he wore in his left ear twinkled like a giggle in the morning sunlight.
Malorie Blackman
#72. Dear God, please let him have heard me. Please.
Please.
If you're up there.
Somewhere.
Malorie Blackman
#73. It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small.
Malorie Blackman
#74. A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.
Malorie Blackman
#75. So why did you want to kiss me?"
"We're friends aren't we?" Callum shrugged.
I relaxed into a smile. "Of course we are."
"And if you can't kiss your friends who can you kiss?" Callum smiled.
Malorie Blackman
#76. Sephy told me once that I was the only one who could make her cry. I've never told this to her, or to anyone else for the matter, but it works the other way round as well.
- callum mcgregor/noughts&crosses
Malorie Blackman
#77. The point is, you have family and friends who love you. You have a world out there just waiting for you to conquer it. You have a life that will be anything you make it. That's the point.
Malorie Blackman
#79. I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren't any.'
Malorie Blackman
#80. But faith is so easy to hold onto when you don't need it. And so hard to find when you do.
Malorie Blackman
#81. When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet' ... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.
Malorie Blackman
#82. Why was it that when noughts committed criminal acts, the fact that they were noughts was always pointed out? The banker was a Cross. The newsreader didn't even mention it.
Malorie Blackman
#83. That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.
Malorie Blackman
#84. Just remember, Callum when you're floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.
Malorie Blackman
#85. Jude's fourth law: Caring equals vulnerability. Never show either.
Malorie Blackman
#86. He loved to draw. Animals pouncing mostly. And trees. Always lone trees in black landscapes.
Malorie Blackman
#87. You can have all the talent in the world, but without determination, you won't get very far.
Malorie Blackman
#89. She stays lost in the middle of her own world somewhere. We can't get in and she doesn't come out. Not often anyway, and certainly not for any length of time. But her mind takes her to somewhere kind, I think, to judge by the peaceful, serene look on her face most of the time.
Malorie Blackman
#90. I read a lot of highly unsuitable books for an 11-year-old. I was desperate to read as widely as possible. I thought, 'There are so many places I am never going to get the chance to visit, but I can if I read them.' And I did. I could go anywhere in the world - and off it - by reading.
Malorie Blackman
#91. Sometimes the things you're convinced you don't want turn out to be the thing you need the most in this world.
Malorie Blackman
#92. He thought astrology was a load of bosh! Didn't believe in stars and planets telling his fortune or anyone else's.
Malorie Blackman
#93. He was constantly surprising me like that. I had thought I didn't like surprises, but I found I did when they came from him.
Malorie Blackman
#94. Shakespeare's 'Othello' was inspired by Cinthio's 'A Moorish Captain'; his 'Hamlet' came from Saxo Grammaticus's 'Amleth.'
Malorie Blackman
#95. There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children, and that's why fiction needs to be diverse.
Malorie Blackman
#96. Five years off my life ...
I wondered with a wry smile, would people be immortal if they didn't have kids?
Malorie Blackman
#97. I try to widen the horizons of every child I meet, and part of that is promoting diverse forms, be it graphic novels, stories told in a narrative voice, or more translated books, as well as more diverse writers and more diverse characters.
Malorie Blackman
#98. In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.
Malorie Blackman
#100. Children find prescriptive reading lists daunting, and they are a dangerous thing to have in schools.
Malorie Blackman
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