Quotes from Patricia A. McKillip

The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there

Men see what they are most afraid of.

It's an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.

Then you will have to trust me. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope, trust me.

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.

I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness.

Love is an obsolete emotion, ranking in usefulness somewhere between earwigs and toe mold.

All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.

What? It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow.

Do you become in visible?' 'No. I'm there, if you know how to look. I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be.

The moon grew full, then slowly pared itself down until it shriveled into a ghostly boat riding above the roiling dark. Then it fell out of the sky. They climbed into it, left land behind, and floated out to sea.

Be patient, as you must always be patient with new pale seeds buried in the dark ground. When you are stronger, you can begin to think again. But now is the time to feel.

Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born. Here I am no longer my own secret. Will you let me stay?

I wish you were small again, so I could hold you in my arms and comfort you. But you are grown, and you know that for some things there is no comfort.

Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombria's past. Parts of the city's past lay within time's reach, beneath the streets in great old limestone tunnels: the hovels and mansions and sunken river that Ombria shrugged off like a forgotten skin, and buried beneath itself through the centuries.

Peace, tremulous, unexpected, sent a taproot out of nowhere into Morgan's heart.

There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.

Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.

Watching the day slowly bloom into night. That's how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heavy scents.

What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't let us see them, why she clings to them--or they cling to her--as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she can't get out and we can't get in to free her.

I don't teach lies, but I do not teach all I know is true.