Geraldine McCaughrean > Quotes

“I hate clowns. You can't see what they're thinking.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“[Peter Pan] has never broken his terrible habit of eavesdropping. So, maybe that wasn't the rustle of pages you heard while this story lasted, but Peter Pan himself, listening in. In exchanged for a story of yours, he might show you his most prized possession: James Hooks' map of Neverland.

In exchange for a smile, he may show you Neverland itself.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“It's true: Everyone needs a reason to stay alive -- someone who justifies your existence. Someone who loves you. Not beyond all reason. Just loves you. Even just shows an interest. Even someone who doesn't exist, or isn't yours. No, no! They don't even have to love you! They just have to be there to love! Target for your arrows. Magnetic Pole to drag on your compass needle and stop it spinning and tell you where you're heading and...Someone to soak up all the yearning. That's what I think.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them...go around them...take evasive action.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean

“He is everything, everything, everything I ever admired and wanted and couldn't have. He is everything I needed and couldn't find in real life. Of course he is. That's why I invented him.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“Not everyone can be rich,' Peter went on. 'Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave! If we tell ourselves we can do it; if we say to our hearts, 'don't jump about'; if we carry ourselves like heroes... we can all be brave! We can all look Danger in the face and be glad to meet it, and draw our swords and say, 'Have at you, Danger! You don't scare me!' Courage is just there for the taking; you don't need money to buy it. You don't need to go to school to learn it! Courage is the thing, isn't it? Don't you think so, people? Aren't I right? Courage is the thing! All goes if courage goes!”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“For some crime committed by my ancestors in the dark and forgotten days, I came into the world already tarred and feathered. With shyness. It hurts terribly -- every bit as much as hot tar choking every pore -- and I wish I could be rid of it. But it hurts a lot less than having someone try and peel the shyness off. That's like being flayed alive.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“There are things roaming around inside my head as clever as Theseus in the Labyrinth. It's just that nobody ever gave them the necessary piece of string, so they'll never find their way out.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“If you want to please me very much, you will fall down when I shoot you," -Oates
The White Darkness”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“Tell me a story,' demanded Fireflyer.

'Why? Do you eat them, too, then?'

'Only the ohs and ayes and ees and oos. The Kays are too spikey and the zeds are too buzzzy and the ones with the dots get stuck in your teeth and the esses sometimes slide down inside your vest and tickle.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave!”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“Don't struggle too hard to understand people, Sym. They're hideously complicated. Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them...go around them...take evasive action.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“I like people. I like watching them. It's just I'd prefer to do it from a mile away using very poweful binoculars.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“Every crime like this needs someone like me to look away and say nothing.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“That's how it's done, you see. It's the same way people get horses out of burning buildings. When the whole world's on fire around you, you use a blindfold. Everyone needs someone like Titus for a blindfold. ”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“We built that Wendy House our own selves, for Wendy! And you can't keep a Wendy out of her own Wendy House!”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“Being irretrievably damned had its advantages:”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Where the World Ends

“You aren't stupid, Lillian,' said Uncle Victor, smiling and shaking his head, 'but sometimes the things you do are.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“When Titus speaks, I can hear every word. For me, that's like when the optician slides home the right lens and all the e's and g's and o's and c's become perfectly clear again and it isn't a struggle, even to read the bottom-most line...His voice touches places inside me like someone moving through a house, flicking light switches...No peering into corners for what's been said.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“But I refuse to say. Because I love him, and you'd give anything, wouldn't you? You'd give anything for someone you love not to die alone and in scalding agony?”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“The richer you are, I've worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“The gods never meant you to live forever, so why spoil they life they did give you? Is a rainbow any less beautiful because it's short-lived? Or because you can't grasp hold of it? Consider, man. Perhaps it is beautiful expressly because of that.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Gilgamesh the Hero

“These things happen. It is not the end of the world.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Not the End of the World

“Lord bless us! I never would have believed it! said the friar, startled out of his usual cynicism. 'An honest man!”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The Canterbury Tales

“Further and further afield he travelled. Taking ship, he sailed to a hot and passionate country where gypsy women dressed in scarlet, and their dark skin sweated as they danced tarantellas under a tambourine moon.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The Canterbury Tales

“The moment a child answers the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ he is halfway to being an adult.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Peter Pan in Scarlet

“It’s true: Everyone needs a reason to stay alive — someone who justifies your existence. Someone who loves you. Not beyond all reason. Just loves you. Even just shows an interest. Even someone who doesn’t exist, or isn’t yours. No, no! They don’t even have to love you! They just have to be there to love! Target for your arrows. Magnetic Pole to drag on your compass needle and stop it spinning and tell you where you’re heading and…Someone to soak up all the yearning. That’s what I think.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean

“The friar organized a hunt. But the Alchemist was long gone -- lost among the townspeople like one bad penny melting into a puddle of lead.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The Canterbury Tales

“Like everything perfect, he set up a ferocious pain inside me -- a flickering, griping sort of pain, because nothing as marvelous as that is ever within reach, is it? Nothing as beautiful can ever last.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness

“Lord bless us! I never would have believed it!' said the friar, startled out of his usual cynicism. 'An honest man!”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, The Canterbury Tales