Top 100 Patrick Ness Quotes
#1. I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.
[Patrick Ness slams library cuts (The Guardian, 23 June 2011)]
Patrick Ness
#2. There's so much proscription in the lives of young people, and it's so vital to have a place that says, look, here are the doors onto the world and amazingly, you're free to choose any one you like. - Patrick Ness on Libraries
Patrick Ness
#3. 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
#4. Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.
Patrick Ness
#5. It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.
Patrick Ness
#6. Blame is something that is shared and denied in equal measures.
Patrick Ness
#7. A peace that blacked yer eye," I say. "A peace that split yer lip.
Patrick Ness
#8. Oh, yeah?" Seth says, growing angry. "How did you die again? Freak accident falling down the stairs?
Patrick Ness
#9. Bitches,' Mr. Hammar says from atop his horse.
'Your analysis' was not asked for, Seargeant,' says the Mayor.
Patrick Ness
#10. He'd known Lily forever. Or for as long as he could remember, which was basically the same thing.
Patrick Ness
#11. This voice had a quality to it, a monstrous quality, wild and untamed.
Patrick Ness
#12. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week's end of the world and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.
Patrick Ness
#13. Finally, we come to the real thing, the thing that makes men men, the thing were born for, Todd. War.
Patrick Ness
#14. What happened in the nightmare was something no one else ever needed to know. Conor
Patrick Ness
#16. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
Patrick Ness
#17. The Apothecary was surprised. "You would give up everything you believed in?"
"If it would save my daughters," the parson said. "I'd give up everything.
Patrick Ness
#18. No, life didn't always go how you thought it might.
Sometimes it didn't make any sense at all.
You've just got to find a way to live there anyway ...
Patrick Ness
#19. It's a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that's what gets lost in all that Noise.
Patrick Ness
#20. Connor:I let her go. I could have held on but I let her go.
The Monster:And that is the truth.
Connor:I didn't mean it, though! I didn't mean to let her go! And now it's for real! Now she's going to die and it's my fault!
The Monster:And that is not the truth at all.
Patrick Ness
#21. There's more than this, Sethy," Gudmund said. "This sucks beyond belief, but there's more. We just have to get there.
Patrick Ness
#22. Do you believe there's hope at the end?"
"No, no, I dont, but im still going, you coming with me?
Patrick Ness
#23. I like writers who seem to write because they have to. You get the feeling of this burning desire to tell a story. I find it in Peter Carey, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith and David Foster Wallace.
Patrick Ness
#25. War is a monster ... War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows ... And otherwise normal people become monsters, too.
Patrick Ness
#26. It's always nice when two people who don't got no one else find each other as friends.
Patrick Ness
#27. He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.
Patrick Ness
#28. His grandma wouldn't be here when his father arrived. Which suited everyone.
Patrick Ness
#29. His absence is so big it's like he's there.
Patrick Ness
#30. I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.
Patrick Ness
#31. When luck ain't with you, it's against you.
Patrick Ness
#32. And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing.
Each of us knowing the other.
Patrick Ness
#33. I was only following orders," the Mayor mocks. "The refuge of scoundrels since the dawn of time.
Patrick Ness
#34. Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.
Patrick Ness
#36. It's love. But it's a different kind,"
"Doesn't make it any less love, though.
Patrick Ness
#38. There's a quiet moment when my Noise fills the room with Manchee, just fills it with him, side to side, barking and barking and needing a poo and barking some more. And dying.
Patrick Ness
#39. A sudden, hard wind swirled up around them, and the monster spread its arms out wide, so wide they seemed to reach to opposite horizons, so wide they seemed big enough to encompass the world. I
Patrick Ness
#40. They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.
Patrick Ness
#41. Through Hell or high water."
"It'll probably be both.
Patrick Ness
#42. Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that's working, I can just let it go and do all the stuff that I love - 'Trojan horse' it. There are so many great YA heroines, and that's fantastic, but what about the emotionally complex boy out there? That's who I tend to write about.
Patrick Ness
#43. 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
#44. There's only one room on this planet for one side to be dominant, Todd.
Patrick Ness
#46. We can save the world," I say, trying to smile. "You and me.
Patrick Ness
#47. Whenever I have tried to write for other people, that's when my writing has failed, when nobody wanted to read it or buy it. But it's only when I've been able to write a story that makes me excited, only then have other people wanted to read it.
Patrick Ness
#48. But wherever I am, whatever this world is, I've just got to be sure I'm me and that's what's real ... Know yourself and go in swinging. If it hurts when you hit it, it might be real, too.
Patrick Ness
#49. The key is never sheer numbers. The key is the correct catalyst. A pebble can start a landslide and the boulders have no say in the matter as they tumble down the hill.
Patrick Ness
#50. You be as angry as you need to be," she said. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.
Patrick Ness
#51. It's really important to me not to be a snob about age division or about genre or whatever. The story needs to be what the story needs to be.
Patrick Ness
#52. Patience, she says again. But she says it impatiently.
Patrick Ness
#55. That was how the world worked, wasn't it? You set your sights on something, and life came along with a sucker punch.
Patrick Ness
#56. The whole room was like a museum of how people lived in olden times.
Patrick Ness
#57. Hope is terrifying, Viola," he said. "No one wants to admit it, but it is.
Patrick Ness
#58. 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
#60. To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.
Patrick Ness
#61. 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
#62. The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that that's always the truth.
Patrick Ness
#64. Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.
Patrick Ness
#65. We've got now,' ( ... ) 'And I've got you. And that's all I want.
Patrick Ness
#66. There's hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall." ~pg 426
Patrick Ness
#67. If I sit down to write a young-adult novel, then I'm going to write either to the punch-pulling expectation of what I can't do, or I'm going to go the other way and think about what can I sneak in to be 'down with the kids' - which would be excruciating.
Patrick Ness
#68. Is this what war is?
Is this what men want so much?
Is this sposed to make them men?
Patrick Ness
#69. People ask for what they need in different ways. Sometimes by not even asking for it at all.
Patrick Ness
#70. Not everything is black and white. In fact, almost nothing is.
Patrick Ness
#71. Life does not have to go how you think it will," Tomasz says. "Not even when you are very sure what is going to happen.
Patrick Ness
#72. Cuz that's it -
That's the nasty, nasty secret of war -
When yer winning -
When yer winning, it's effing thrilling -
Patrick Ness
#73. How have you made it this far in life, George? How do you not get eaten alive by the world out there?
Patrick Ness
#74. And what exactly do you think this proves?" he spits. "You've got power, but you don't know what to do with it."
VIOLA
"Looks like I'm doing fine," I say.
Patrick Ness
#75. She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. "We are the choices we make." It takes me a second to realize she's just said goodbye.
Patrick Ness
#76. Superior numbers versus superior firepower. A recipe for unending slaughter.
Patrick Ness
#77. He didn't want to go and look. But at the same time, a part of him wanted to look more than anything.
Patrick Ness
#78. The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.
Patrick Ness
#79. If you speak the truth, the monster whispered in his ear, you will be able to face whatever comes.
Patrick Ness
#80. The future of fiction? he said. Maybe, she said. Will it have room for, you know, love & stuff? he said. Always, she said. OK then, he said.
Patrick Ness
#81. 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
#82. But then there's her eyes and they look at you and don't brook no arguments, don't look like they ever doubt themselves, even when they should. Maybe they're the eyes of a giant after all.
Patrick Ness
#84. 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
#85. Eugene turned the key. A sound like a two-story house being shat out the asshole of a zebra ripped through the dashboard.
Patrick Ness
#86. Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?
Patrick Ness
#87. No one knew.
Then Lily's mum knew, of course.
Then Lily knew.
And then everyone knew. Everyone. Which changed the whole world in a single day.
And he was never going to forgive her for that.
Patrick Ness
#88. Learn to take criticism. Your first draft won't be perfect, and it's damaging to the book to think that it is. Every great book you've ever read has been rewritten a dozen times. This is the hardest think to learn (trust me), but very, very important.
Patrick Ness
#89. But the thing about good ideas is that they grow other ideas.
Patrick Ness
#91. You can eff off, too, I say, except I don't say eff, I say what 'eff' stands for.
Patrick Ness
#92. Maybe hearts don't ever stop breaking once broken.
Patrick Ness
#93. If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.
Patrick Ness
#94. This must be insanity. (But I'm as sane as anyone.)
Patrick Ness
#95. Haven musta been a comfortable place, a place where men weren't fighting every day just to survive. Maybe too much comfort was the problem.
Patrick Ness
#96. Maybe probably ain't all that comforting a word when it's maybe yer not dying.
Patrick Ness
#97. He's a woman.
He's a grown woman
He's a old woman.
Patrick Ness
#98. It's always darkest before the dawn, Todd."
I look at him, baffled. "No, it ain't! What kinda stupid saying is that? It's always lightest before the dawn!
Patrick Ness
#99. 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
#100. And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her.
Patrick Ness
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
