Best 22 quotes of Kelly Barnhill on MyQuotes

Each of us is our own story, but none of us is only our own story. The arc of my own personal story is inexplicably and intrinsically linked to the story of my parents and the story of my neighbor and the story of the kid that I met one time. All of us are linked in ways that we don't always see. We are never simply ourselves.

I do open endings on purpose. I expect a lot from my readers. I want them to do much of the work, because I believe that the story is built by the reader, not by the writer. I like having an open ending to a standalone fantasy, because it allows a continuing story to be written in the hearts of the readers.

Stories have a tendency to seep across the shining membrane walls separating the universes. They whisper and flutter like the feathers of birds, from island to mainland and back again. They fall into dreams like rain.

That's the magic of revisions - every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.

And the things that they did not speak of began to outweigh the thing that they did. Each secret, each unspoken thing was round and hard and heavy and cold, like a stone hung around the necks of both grandmother and girl. Their backs bent under the weight of secrets.

But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always.

Each day, Luna's ability to break rules in new and creative ways was an astonishment to all who knew her. She tried to ride the goats, tried to roll boulders down the mountain and into the side of the barn (for decoration, she explained), tried to teach the chickens to fly, and once almost drowned in the swamp. (Glerk saved her. Thank goodness.) She gave ale to the geese to see if it made them walk funny (it did) and put peppercorns in the goat's feed to see if it would make them jump (they didn't jump; they just destroyed the fence). Every day she goaded Fyrian into making atrocious choices or she played tricks on the poor dragon, making him cry. She climbed, hid, built, broke, wrote on the walls, and spoiled dresses when they had only just been finished. Her hair ratted, her nose smudged, and she left handprints wherever she went

Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.

I dream of a garden overripe and wild. Of a woman gathering the sea into her hands and letting it fall in many colored petals to a green, green earth. I dream of words on a page transforming to birds, and birds transforming to children, and children transforming to stars.

I miss her,' Fyrian sobbed, 'My mother. I miss her so much. This witch should pay for what she's done.' Glerk stood tall as a mountain. He was serene as a bog. He looked at Fyrian with all the love in the world 'No, Fyrian. That answer is too easy, my friend. Look deeper.

It's all right,' she said. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. Love hurt. So why was she happy? 'The world is good. Go see it.' And the bird leaped into the sky and flew away.

It was wrong not to be curious, it was wrong not to wonder.

Lost, yes, but there was a freedom in being lost. There was a freedom in abandonment too, if you thought about it right.

Magic and madness are link after all.

Memory was a slippery thing—slick moss on an unstable slope—and it was ever so easy to lose one’s footing and fall

Not every story is true. And sometimes the things that were wicked become the things that save us, and the things that were good doom us to misery and pain.

She is doing that on purpose, he thought as he tried to force his own smile away from his wide, damp jaws. She is being adorable as some sort of hideous ruse, to spite me. What a mean baby! ... Do not fall in love with that baby...

Sorrow is dangerous.

There is, at its center, something immutably miraculous about the substance and process of reading stories. We read because we hunger to know, to empathize, to feel, to connect, to laugh, to fear, to wonder, and to become, with each page, more than ourselves. To become creatures with souls. We read because it allows us, through force of mind, to hold hands, touch lives, speak as another speaks, listen as another listens, and feel as another feels. We read because we wish to journey forth together. There is, despite everything, a place for empathy and compassion and rumination, and just knowing that fact, for me, is an occasion for joy. That we still, in this frenetic and bombastic and self-centered age, have legions of people who can and do return to the quietness of the page, opening their minds and hearts, again and again, to the wild world and the stuff of life, pinned into scenes and characters and sharp images and pretty sentences--well. It sure feels like a miracle, doesn't it?

There is no utter truth or utter falsehood in this world. There is only mostly. Which part of the mostly you choose to accept, well, that much is up to you.

There's no such thing as complete when it comes to stories. Stories are infinite. They are as infinite as worlds.

To be human is to lie, after all. Our minds tell lies to our hearts and our hearts tell lies to our souls.