Patrick Ness Quotes
-
A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not.
-
I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?
-
It's fun being paid to read stuff and air your opinion about it - pretty much a dream job for a writer.
-
Belief is half of all healing. Belief in the cure, belief in the future that awaits.
-
I meet blind and partially-sighted young readers all the time, and it's a shock that so few books are available to them.
-
For me, when I start a novel, I only have a general sense of what I am going to do - usually three or four big scenes or something to which I can really respond emotionally.
-
If one of us falls, we all fall.
-
I write 1,000-1,500 words. The next day, I rewrite it and add 1,000-1,500 words to the end of it.
-
I like writing for teenagers because they're not snobs.
-
No one wants to read an apologetic book.
-
I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.
-
Conor held tightly onto his mother. And by doing so, he could finally let her go.
-
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!
-
I think the reason teenage fiction is so popular with adults is that adults hunger for narrative just as badly as teenagers do.
-
You're never more alive than in battle." "Never more dead after," I say.
-
That's another thing about Noise. Everything that's ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.
-
You notice that he does not ask, Where am I?" says the Mayor's voice, moving out there, somewhere. "His first words are, Where is she? And his Noise says the same. Interesting.
-
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.
-
Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.
-
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
-
Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.” “But if you don't at least try to live them,” Bradley says, “then there's no point in living at all.
-
Librarians open up the world. Knowledge is useless if you don't even know where to begin to look. How much more can you discover when someone can point you in the right direction, when someone can maybe even give you a treasure map, to places you may not have even thought you were allowed to go? This is what librarians do.
-
Online is such a brilliant, brilliant way to connect with young readers - even if they just want to tweet, 'Hey, I read your book!' - that, absolutely, I connect with that. But I also treat writing as solitary and keep it to myself as long as I can.
-
Sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You'd be surprised.