Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fiction takes us to places that we would never otherwise go, and puts us behind eyes that are not our own.
Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
If a Devil is one who dares, when others hold back, then I am happy to play the Devil in this Mystery, boy.
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.
If you read enough Lionel Fanthorpe, your brain starts to turn to jelly and just dribbles out of your ears.
There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.
You are young, and in love. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
For some, it was easier to take the leap from the leafless tree and dance on nothing until dancing was done.
The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.
Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.
I imagine the world dividing into the people who want to feed their children, and the ones shooting at them.
There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubble in amber.
I think you're doing better than you were the last time we saw you. You're growing a new heart, for a start.
It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.
I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.
There aren't any good guys, and there aren't any bad guys. There's just us. People. Doing our best to get by.
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.
You don't get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd.
You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly. 'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.
You play your cards so close to your chest," said Shadow, "that I'm not even sure they're really cards at all.
Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.
Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold.
Bod quite liked crows. He thought they were funny and he liked the way they helped to keep the graveyard tidy.
Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality waiting to be shaped.
Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience.
I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection.
I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.
The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.
It does not matter where you come from, if you walk toward the truth you will reach it, whatever path you take.
If you have something specific and visible to fear, rather than something that could be anything, it is easier.
He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.
It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will take a graveyard.
I can get away before the storm hits. Away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses.
There may be a parallel between woodcuts and radio; radio plays are a living art form everywhere except the USA.
We are small but we are many We are many we are small We were here before you rose We will be here when you fall
Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.
Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Whatever you're scared of doing, Do it.
I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.
The view changes from where you are standing. Words can wound, and wounds can heal. All of these things are true.
If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.
This was the void. Not blackness, not nothingness. This was what lay beneath the thinly painted scrim of reality.
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.
I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there.
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us.
'Doctor Who' was the first mythology that I learned, before ever I ran into Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythologies.
And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can.
Books are defensive, not offensive (unless you're the puzzled adult trying to make the kid with the book interact).
Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on.