Quotes from Robin McKinley

Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you

Mathin said: It is best to take your opponent's sash. The kysin mark each blow dealt, but to cut off the other rider's sash is best. This you will do. Oh, said Harry. You may, if you wish, unhorse him first, Mathin added as an afterthought. Thanks, said Harry.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing.

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?' It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.

Then marry me. For I love you, and I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart.

It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story The Book-Bag.

So when a dragon is directly over you, well, even if you're me and you're kind of used to it, your medulla oblongata is still telling you 'the sky is falling, you're about to die, run like hell.

Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you. Can I trust him? What do I have to lose?

Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.

If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.

I smiled. I understand now. But It doesn't matter and you needn't apologize. They have been very kind to me too. Even if we did differ a little about suitable dresses. He considered me a moment, a mischievous light creeping into his eyes, and said: Was THAT the dress - that night you wouldn't come out of your room? I grinned and nodded, and we both laughed;

Cannot a Beast be tamed?

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.

We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.

He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.

And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.

It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.

She laughed at him then, because he sounded like a small boy, not like a very large grown-up Beast with a voice so deep it made the hair on the back of your neck stir when you heard it. 'But vegetables are good for you,' she said, and added caressingly, 'They make you grow up big and strong.' He smiled, showing a great many teeth. 'You see why I wish to eat no more vegetables.

Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.

The weak grey light that serves as harbinger of red and golden dawn faintly lit my window. I fumbled for a candle, found and lit it, and by its little light saw that the rose floating in the bowl was dying. It had already lost most of its petals, which floated on the water like tiny, un-seaworthy boats, deserted for safer craft. Dear God, I said. I must go back at once.

All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.

But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.