Quotes from Patrick Ness

People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.

Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.

If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.

Folk tales and myths, they've lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.

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.

Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world changes, whether I want it to or not.

Whereas the town knows all about you already and wants to know more and wants to beat you with what it knows till how can you have any of yourself left at all?

I'll do it, Todd," I whisper. "I'll come with you." And he doesn't say anything, just squeezes my hand harder and brings it up to his face like he wants to breathe me in.

The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day.

War makes monsters out of men.

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

The magical and fantastical isn't something I'm uncomfortable with in books, and I chafe slightly at the idea that a purely realist novel somehow has more value.

Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.

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.

The only place you belong is the place you can never go back. And so yer always alone, forever and always.

We have lost the idea that something can be secret because it is valuable, not because it's shameful. If you share everything with everybody, what have you got for yourself? I tweet and I blog, but I save a lot for myself. Not because I am ashamed.

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

Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

Stories are important...They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.

Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

We are the choices we make.

Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.

Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.