Top 100 Robin Mckinley Quotes
#1. Robin McKinley's 'The Blue Sword' was a defining book of my teen years, and I'd love to have more books like that in the world.
Carrie Vaughn
#2. He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.
Robin McKinley
#3. My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily," he said. "You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval."
I stared at him. "You made a *joke*."
"I have heard this kind of thing may happen ...
Robin McKinley
#4. I have a mastery of the art of worrying that is a burden to me if I may not use it.
Robin
Robin McKinley
#5. We may not like it, but we need human friends, because we have human enemies whether we will or nay.
Robin McKinley
#6. Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too-particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the bottom.
But I did know. Now was what was at the bottom. I was already there.
Robin McKinley
#7. I'm your friend, Sunshine," he said. "Everything else is just static on the line.
Robin McKinley
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all of her life how to be stubborn.
Robin McKinley
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.
Robin McKinley
#14. 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
#15. Post-traumatic shock, phooey. Seemed to me the trauma was trotting right along with me, like a dog on a leash with its owner. I was the dog. I
Robin McKinley
#16. What was she to say? The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until next time?
Robin McKinley
#17. But it is not, as we say when we are being diplomatic, a fruitful source of inquiry.
Robin McKinley
#18. 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
#19. Swords. That is no faenorn ; that is slaughter."
The Grand Seneschal shrugged. "The Master did not protest. And, indeed, what weapon could he have suggested that would suit him any better?"
"Fire," she said.
"He would not," said the Seneschal. "You know he would not.
Robin McKinley
#20. One of the things you need to understand is that I'm not a brave person.
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 produce
character references. But that's something else. I'm not brave.
Robin McKinley
#21. The man paused and added with a grin, He also wishes your porter's head on a silver plate for not opening the gate at once upon his herald's declaration of his visit. This tale of threatening brigands is all very well, but can't I see he's the sheriff?
Robin McKinley
#22. Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.
Robin McKinley
#23. And perhaps it did not matter in what world she belonged if both worlds were marching in step.
Robin McKinley
#27. 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
#28. She fell in love with him, and he with her; that's a spell if you like.
Robin McKinley
#29. The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.
Robin McKinley
#30. Why do you tell me ... so much?"
Luthe considered her. "I tell you ... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know
" He stopped ...
"Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you.
Robin McKinley
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing.
Robin McKinley
#34. It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)
Robin McKinley
#35. You did not disturb me, said the pegasus. I disturbed myself, that I might speak to you.
Robin McKinley
#36. Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.
Robin McKinley
#37. So I said I'd had a headache all day (which was true) and on second thought I would go home to bed, and I was sorry. I was out the door again not five minutes after I'd gone in. Mel
Robin McKinley
#38. 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
#39. It goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.
Robin McKinley
#40. Maybe I should try to be grateful at having been spared intimacy with the most dangerous of the Others. Gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'under the dark.
Robin McKinley
#41. I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.
Robin McKinley
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44.
including Rilly, who was beside herself with excitement, and her mother, who was beside herself with Rilly
Robin McKinley
#45. Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.
Robin McKinley
#46. [Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.
Robin McKinley
#47. She had courage enough, but little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her.
Robin McKinley
#48. 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
#49. First rule: If your dog doesn't do what you want, it's your fault.
Robin McKinley
#50. There remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.
Robin McKinley
#51. There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her.
Robin McKinley
#52. It had not been a very cheerful journey, not the least for the western excursion into Outlander territory, where a stubborn and pompous old man had refused to listen to the truth; but Corlath had expected what he found and-she thought-saw no use in being discouraged.
Robin McKinley
#53. Muffin cups in my bakery were real sorcerer's apprentice material, like the dough for the cinnamon rolls every morning could have stood in for The Blob.
Robin McKinley
#54. It's hard to look too grand when you're led by someone who looks like a pudding with legs.
Robin McKinley
#55. 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
#56. It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don't have a life.
Robin McKinley
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. I disliked promises on principle because my conscience made me keep them
Robin McKinley
#60. Golden arrow? And what would we do with a golden arrow? Give it to Alan for a lute string? I could hang it around my neck on a chain, perhaps, and let it stab me in the ribs when I tried to sit.
Robin McKinley
#61. We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.
Robin McKinley
#62. [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
#63. And what was I panicking about anyway? Being left alone with myself? I'd rather have a vampire around?
Well. Yes.
Robin McKinley
#64. 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
#65. The lessons she'd been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of them, given in the simplest of language, as if words might disguise the truth or (worse) bring it to life.
Robin McKinley
#66. I like to assume that since I drive a car and maintain a respectable credit rating and rarely murder anyone and bury them in the back garden unless they really deserve it, that the fact that I hear voices wont unduly disturb anyone.
Robin McKinley
#67. She wished for Ebono as she wished every time she saw Lrrianay at her father's shoulder, or any pegasus at any bond-mate's shoulder, or any pegasus. Or any time she took a breath, she wished again for Ebon.
Robin McKinley
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.
Robin McKinley
#71. 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
#72. The touch of evil poisons by the idea of it. Reject the idea, and you've rejected the evil
Robin McKinley
#73. One keeps searching for ease, she did not say, and not finding it, till the memories of no-pain seem only like daydreams.
Robin McKinley
#74. I have a new theory about algebra," I said. "In going to learn it by osmosis.
Robin McKinley
#75. Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.
Robin McKinley
#76. 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
#77. The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.
Robin McKinley
#78. People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.
Robin McKinley
#79. What was new was the fact that, despite my heart doing its fight-or-flight, help-we're-prey-and-HEY-STUPID-THAT'S-A-VAMPIRE number, I was glad to see him. Ridiculous but true. Scary but true.
Robin McKinley
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.
Robin McKinley
#83. I didn't want to know that the monster that lived under your bed when you were a kid not only really is there but used to have a few beers with your dad.
Robin McKinley
#84. 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
#85. No, but I am working up to telling you that there is no possibility of there being done what ought to be done-
Robin McKinley
#86. 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
#87. I said with perfect honest, I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no.
Robin McKinley
#88. 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
#89. Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.
Robin McKinley
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for ...
Robin McKinley
#93. There were some things that took life and broke it, not merely into meaninglessness, but with active malice flung the pieces farther, into hell.
Robin McKinley
#94. So when a dragon is directly over you, well, even if you're me and you're kind of used to it, your medulla oblongata is still telling you 'the sky is falling, you're about to die, run like hell.
Robin McKinley
#95. I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?
Robin McKinley
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.
Robin McKinley
#99. 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
#100. He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.
Robin McKinley
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