Quotes from Robin McKinley

You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.

Tell me who you are. You need not tell me your name. Names have power, even human ones. Tell me where you live and what you do with your living.

Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

What was she to say? The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until next time?

The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

I said: He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much. But he is a Beast, said Father helplessly. I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, Cannot a Beast be tamed?

He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.

I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood... I was raving, if only to myself.

My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily, he said. You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval. I stared at him. You made a *joke*. I have heard this kind of thing may happen...

Beauty: You called me beautiful last night. Beast: You do not believe me then? Beauty: Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise. Beast: You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?

If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.

People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.

Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for....

like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?

When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.

I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.

But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded with thorns it may be.

I don't believe in fate, she said at last. But I do believe in... loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents — happy or otherwise — and taking advantage of these.

Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true.

I didn't want to know that the monster that lived under your bed when you were a kid not only really is there but used to have a few beers with your dad.

Never assume. Never make plans. Keep doing the press-ups and deep knee bends: you'll need all your strength and flexibility when your life suddenly implodes. Maybe it won't — some people do lead enchanted lives — but odds are that it will. Some time.

Can't all beasts be tamed?