Quotes from Robin McKinley

Aunt and Katriona kept a few chickens, but the only other domestic animal they had—if either "domestic" or "had" was applicable—was Flinx, their not-a-house-cat. He was presently a fat tortoiseshell puddle sprawled in the sunlight a few rows over. Since he was only crushing a few nonessential greens, which would regrow anyway, they let him be.

I'm not a goddam invalid!" I howled at Charlie. "I don't need to be treated with gloves and—and bedpans! Will you please tell me I'm being a miserable bitch and you'd like to upend a garbage bin over my head!" There was a pause. "Well, the idea had crossed my mind," said Charlie. I stood there, buttery fists clenched, breathing hard. "Thank you," I said.

Their ignorance is so great they are terrified by a hint of the truth; a hint such as you are in yourself.

This is why we need you," said Much comfortably. "You're a pessimist and a good planner.

I thought, I have been so tired, these last two months. I have got used to that too. I have told myself it is just part of—having had what happened, happen. You do not get over something like that quickly. I had told myself that was all it was. I had almost believed it. I had believed it.

It's not silly at all. The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

Just promise us—for this evening—that you won't try to sacrifice yourself to your stubborn idea of justice to a Norman king. No sacrifices till you've had at least one good night's sleep, and something to eat.

It was not an easy vocation, being a priest in that country, where magic was vibrantly everywhere, maddening and unquenchable, and the gods were assumed to be a kind of super-fairy except that you never saw them nor were offered any concrete proof of what the priests claimed they had done for you.

I'd be looking at some stony sculpture Michelangelo would have killed his grandmother to be able to do, and thinking, I don't know that color, that color doesn't exist, but like wow.

The herb border ran wild, and the air smelled wonderful; the breezes often stirred the piney, mossy smell of the forest with the sharp smell of herbs, mixed in the warm smell of fresh bread from the kitchen, and then flung the result over the meadow like a handful of new gold coins.

Have there been many recently who walk where I go now?" inquired the soldier. "No," said the captain of the guard. "There have not been many." And he stepped back into the shadows without saying any more.

He ran till he was blind with running, till he thought he had lived his entire life running, one foot pounding down in front of the other endlessly, till his bones were on fire with it, and every time either foot struck the ground his whole body cried out against the jolt. He set his teeth and ran on.

The soldier looked back at the King as the King looked at him; for a moment he wondered if he should bow, but the King's look seemed to wish to forestall him. The soldier saw a face for whom he would be willing to carry colors into battle once more, and the memory of his colonel seemed to fail and fade nearly to oblivion.

He lowered the goblet, and looked into it. The black water shifted as his hand trembled, and the surface glittered like the facets of polished stone. The noise of the water as it touched the sides was like the distant cries of the imprisoned.

screen that was longing to give me a lightning-bolt-thunder-roll odin-bloody headache

The soldier knew what had happened, and believed; he knew about nightmares. But he knew also that there were nightmares that happened when one was awake, which was a knowledge denied most of the quiet farm folk and city merchants present around him.

she brooded not only about how to tackle her father, but also about what, precisely, she was setting out to do. Test the fire-repellent properties of her discovery. Toward killing dragons. Did she really want to kill dragons? Yes. Why? Pause. To be doing something. To be doing something better than anyone else was doing it. She

So I said I'd had a headache all day (which was true) and on second thought I would go home to bed, and I was sorry. I was out the door again not five minutes after I'd gone in. Mel

It made her laugh - weeding with her fingernails - and the real weight of the earth comforted her.... She knew this garden would do it's best for her. It didn't matter how she knew.

A crying child's voice will carry half across England. Is there still no news?

Luthe sat wearily down. 'I have sat up here too long; it is so pleasant, not meddling.

And what if it doesn't work?" "Then both of us end our existence tonight," he said in that impassive we're-chained-to-the-wall-and-the-bad-guys-are-coming voice I remembered too well.

As I came to know him better, the fear changed to pity, and then, almost, to sorrow; but I could not marry him, however much I came to dislike hurting him.

Let us not gallop to meet future difficulties," said Robin. "A walking pace is enough.