Quotes from Patrick Ness

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking 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 appal you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.

My parents believed that baby talk and avoiding topics was almost child abuse. That you'd end up raising swaddled little morons to send out into the world to be eaten alive. I preferred it when adults expected me to teach up to them rather than always leaning down to me.

The future of fiction? he said. Maybe, she said. Will it have room for, you know, love & stuff? he said. Always, she said. OK then, he said.

Y él supo que era entonces. Supo que de verdad no había vuelta atrás. Que iba a pasar, independiente de lo que él quisiera, independiente de lo que sintiera. Y supo también que lo iba superar. Sería terrible. Mucho más que terrible. Pero sobreviviría

Mel lets us in the house, and we aren't two steps inside before Mary Magdalene, our tubby little orange cat, is running a purring streak around Jared's legs. He touches her nose lightly with his finger. "I see you," he whispers, and Mary Mags does an ecstatic lopsided spin to the floor, like a falling propeller.

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

He said enough to bring me walking, the monster said. I know injustice when I see it.

The only place you belong is the place you can never go back.

A peace that blacked yer eye," I say. "A peace that split yer lip.

If you hear what I say and still wish yourself there, wish yourself a hero, wish yourself a hunter, then either I have failed in my telling or you are a fool.

And that would be the end. So many ends.

There was a small park across from the hospital with paths among the trees. As Conor and his father walked through it toward an empty bench, they kept passing patients in hospital gowns, walking with families or out on their own sneaking cigarettes. It made the park feel like an outdoor hospital room. Or a place where ghosts went to have a break.

And everything I might have been, the different futures I might have taken, all my different lives and deaths that existed in their endless possibilities were extinguished in a single repetition of her three words. "You will hunt." When you predict the future, when you do so strongly and you cling to it, how much of that future do you then cause to happen? And all that might have been was long, long gone.

Você não escreve sua vida com palavras — explicou o monstro. — Você escreve com ações. O que você pensa não é tão importante. Só é importante o que você faz.

But then there's her eyes and they look at you and don't brook no arguments, don't look like they ever doubt themselves, even when they should. Maybe they're the eyes of a giant after all.

Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you. Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not my name, but the name I use for this story. A name, I hoped, that would be free of prophecy, free of the burden of a future placed upon it, free of any destiny that would tear it from my hands and destroy worlds. You think I overstate. You are wrong.

I turn back to the man. Back to Ben. He is mine, I think. If there is peace, he is mine. Mine to kill.

Ojalá me quedaran cien años -dijo con voz muy baja-. Cien años que darte.

So what do I do?" he finally asked. You do what you did just know, the monster said. You speak the truth. "That's it?" You think it's easy? The monster raised two enormous eyebrows. You were willing to die rather than speak it.

It had been amazing. Just utterly, utterly amazing, like that whole summer before senior year had been, when everything had seemed possible, when everything good felt like it was just within reach for once, when if he could just hang in there, it really would finally all come together

He spoke the truth. He told the rest of the fourth tale. "I can't stand it anymore!" he cried out as the fire raged around him. "I can't stand knowing that she'll go! I just want it to be over! I want it to be finished!

I can't stand it anymore!" he cried out as the fire raged around him. "I can't stand knowing that she'll go! I just want it to be over! I want it to be finished!" And

You have let your devil get away from you." He looked genuinely confused. "To what other purpose is a devil?