Quotes from Patrick Ness

Haven't you ever felt like there has to be more? Like there's more out there somewhere, just beyond your grasp, if you could only get to it..

There's always choices, pup, but from what I hear, ye made the right one.

The rest of us just have to live here, hovering around the edges, left out of it all, for the most part.

The green things of this world are just wondrous, aren't they? We work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes they're the very thing that saves us.

There are worse things than being invisible, the monster had said, and it was right. Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now. But he was further away than ever.

It was not wrong, the monster said, It was only a thought, one of a million. It was not an action.

Give him numbers, he's great. Give him words and sentences to put together and his forehead creases down so you can see exactly what he'll look like when he's eighty.

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

Know yourself, he thinks, as they sail past his house. And go in swinging.

You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do. There

Are you serious? Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you've got to do is find a way to live there.

A little knowledge could be a large comfort.

Finally, we come to the real thing, the thing that makes men men, the thing were born for, Todd. War.

He opens his voice, showing me other sunrises he has seen, where the fields turn golden and the Source and his one in particular stood up from their early morning labours to watch it rise, a memory as simple as that, yet covered in joy and loss and love and grief- And hope.

How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?

There were as many truths - overlapping, stewed together - as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story's life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.

Always," I say to him. "Every time.

The house was quiet when he got inside. Why wouldn't it be? He was alone.

War makes monsters of men," I say, quoting Ben from that night in the weird place where New World buried its dead. "And women," Mistress Coyle says.

Kindness is the most important thing of all. Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle.

I'd keep my eyes open, remember who I was, and go in swinging

The thing is, Todd, people don't really want freedom, no matter how much they might bleat on about it.

They're just stupid berries. Woo-hoo, so scary . Oh, please, please, save me from the berries!

If you ever see a war," she says, not lookng up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. 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.