Because even the one you hate leaves an absence when they go.
Smart boys make useless men.
Many things that are true feel like a cheat.
A memory is not the thing remembered.
No, life didn’t always go how you thought it might. Sometimes it didn’t make any sense at all. You’ve just got to find a way to live there anyway...
His grandma burst into his mum’s hospital room ahead of him with a terrible question on her face. But there was a nurse inside who answered immediately. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re in time.
The only place you belong is the place you can never go back to.
Sometimes the rumour of an army is just as effective as the army itself.
There’s so much proscription in the lives of young people, and it’s so vital to have a place that says, look, here are the doors onto the world and amazingly, you’re free to choose any one you like. – Patrick Ness on Libraries.
Belief is half of all healing.
Along the edge of this green lived a man. His name is not important, as no one ever used it. The villagers only ever called him the Apothecary.
There was a glass-fronted cabinet opposite, filled with plates on display stands and teacups with so many curlicues it was a wonder you could drink from them without cutting your lips.
I don’t believe in guardian angels,” Regine says seriously. “Just people who are there for you and people who aren’t.
Because humans are complicated beasts,” the monster said.
You said war should never be personal, but that’s all it’s ever been for me.
His mother shakes her head. “Everyone thinks they know what’s best. Everyone.” And then a voice behind him says, “Sometimes you need to find out that you don’t, though.
You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.
There’s more than this, Sethy,” Gudmund said. “This sucks beyond belief, but there’s more. We just have to get there.
Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
That was how the world worked, wasn’t it? You set your sights on something, and life came along with a sucker punch.