Best 272 quotes of Patrick Ness on MyQuotes

A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative.

A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.

Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.

A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.

And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most

And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.

...and I have this stupid little thought that Aaron didn't survive the croc attack after all, that he died but he's so pissed off at me that dying didn't stop him from coming here to kill me anyway.

And I know it - I know it in my heart - Right now - Todd Hewitt - There's nothing we can't do together -

And I know I’ve lost. Everything is lost. Everything is over. “As the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,” the Mayor says, holding out his hands as if to show me the world for the first time,” let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.” “Todd?” Viola whispers, her eyes closed. I hold her tightly to me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.” We’ve run right into a trap. We’ve run right off the end of the world. “Welcome,” says the Mayor,” to the New Prentisstown.

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.

And it hurts her, but it's an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it's good, but it hurts.

And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.

And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.

And then a low and powerful sound rumbles thru the sky, like some giant, deep horn. A sound God would make when he wanted yer attenshun.

And then his noise falls completely silent- And he stops struggling- And looking right into my eyes- He dies. My Todd dies.

And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside me. And i fall back into it.

And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.

And you," he says, "you need to talk to your boy." He lifts my chin. "And if he needs saving, then you save him. Isn't that what you told me you did for each other?" I let go a few more tears but then I nod. "Over and over again.

As destruction goes, the monster said behind him, this is all remarkably pitiful.

As long as I hold it as long as I use it, the knife lives, lives in order to take life, but it has to be commanded, it has to have me to tell it to kill, and it wants to, it wants to plunge and thrust and cut and stab and gouge, but I have to want it to as well, my will has to join with its will. I'm the one who allows it and I'm the one responsible.

As to how you'll help me," he says. "Well, we have met the Answer, have we not?" He turns back to look at us, his eyes glinting. "It's time for them to meet the Ask.

Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions'-- 'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky. 'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.

Because I'm not blind to how Harry works, you know," she said. "A bully with a charisma and top marks is still a bully." She sighed, annoyed. "He'll probably end up Prime Minister one day. God help us all.

Belief is half of all healing. Belief in the cure, belief in the future that awaits.

But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.

Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now. But he was further away than ever.

Conor held tightly onto his mother. And by doing so, he could finally let her go.

Didn't you finish your chemistry in school?" "You closed the school and burnt all the books." "Ah, so I did.

Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.

Do we hate paradise so much we need to make sure it becomes a trash heap?

Do you not wonder sometimes, she showed now, sadly, if in some ways they are correct? That we are asking too much of the world?"No," he said. "They're the ones who are asking for too little.

even when peaceful cooperation is the obvious thing, the only thing that will keep any of us alive- There are still people who won't make that choice

Everything that's happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.

Flakes of white fall thru the trees and onto the road, catching on our clothes and hair. It's a silent fall and it's weird how it makes everything else seem quiet, too, like it's trying to tell you a secret, a terrible, terrible secret.

For me it is really important to have a story with blood in the veins, there are bad tempers and good tempers.

Girls are small and polite and smiley. They wear dresses and their hair is long and it’s pulled into shapes behind their heads or on either side.

Guessing a thing ain't knowing a thing.

Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.

He was still alive. Which was the worst thing that could have happened.

Here I am. Here we are. Here we go. Here is all that matters.

Here is the boy, drowning.

HERE It’s- Can I say? It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.

Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "I think maybe everybody falls," I say. "I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking." I pull on her arms gently to make sure she's listening. "I think the asking is whether we get back up again.

Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

How do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month’s time exactly.

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.

I don't know how much time passes with us just lying there, just feeling that the other is really there, really true, really alive, feeling the safety of him, his weight against mine, the roughness of his fingers touching my face, his warmth and his smell and the dustiness of his clothes, and we barely speak.