H.G. Parry > Quotes

“you know when you read a book, sometimes, and you suddenly realize that you’ve been missing something your whole life, and you weren’t even aware, and all at once you’ve found it and are just a little bit more whole?”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“Every supporting character is the protagonist of his own story.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“I thought you said everything in a book has meaning.” “It does! That doesn’t mean it means what you want it to mean!”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“She was a half-wild thing of ink and grass and sea breezes, raised by books and rabbits and fairy lore, and that was all she cared to be.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“This wasn't like the hardship in books. It wasn't just that characters in books weren't real and Anna and the children were - that part of it was obvious and expected. It was that the hardship in books was written. It had purpose. It was part of a story, and however bleak it looked for the people inside the pages, that only meant there were more pages left before the end - unless it was a tragedy, or something Russian. Even then, things would work out the way they ought. It wasn't true here. Pain was simply pain, and there was nothing to do about it except refuse to let it break you.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“It was just that whenever she had thought of seeing the world, she had never realized what it would be like to have the world see her back”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“Death isn't a habit you develop, you know, like tobacco or whiskey. It only takes once.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“I don’t care what everyone says, damaging books is worse than damaging people. People heal up. Books never do. The marks always show.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“History is every bit as much of a story as fiction.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“It scares the living daylights out of everybody. Present company excepted, I’m sure.” “I don’t really do living or daylight,” Dorian said. “I’m a Gothic masterpiece.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“That’s what all laws should do. Impose the restrictions that, if human beings were always moral and rational, they would impose upon themselves.”
― H.G. Parry, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

“In every fairy tale ever told, it's a bad idea to tangle with a magician's daughter."
Nobody, not Hutch, not Rowan, not even herself, had ever referred to her in those terms before. And yet hearing it made her relationship with Rowan so clear and so bright that it hurt. She still didn't know who he was, or why he had done so many of the things he had done. But she knew who he had raised her to be. If he wasn't her father, then she at least was his daughter.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“What we see when we look at people is just a bundle of our own interpretations”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“I sometimes think ‘just this once’ is the most dangerous phrase in the English language.”
― H.G. Parry, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

“As I recall,” Millie said, “in your book, your secret isn’t revealed until you stab your painting in the heart.” He shrugged. “That’s how all secrets are revealed, in the end. Either someone else betrays us, or we betray ourselves.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“There are coincidences in life, not in books. Everything in a book is placed there for a reason. What’s the reason for this one?”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“She had tried when she turned sixteen to think of herself as a woman, like Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet or the multitudes of heroines who lived in her books, but in her head she wasn't there. They were all older than her, and had all, even Jane, seen more of life. And yet she was too old to be Sara Crewe or Alice or Wendy Darling either. She was a liminal person, trapped between a world she'd grown out of and another that wouldn't let her in. It was one reason why she wanted to leave the island so badly--- the hope that leaving the place she'd grown up would help her leave her childhood behind. Not forever, not yet. But for a visit, to see what it was like.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“Truth, at least complete truth, isn’t held in words. But there would be no truth at all without them. It lies behind them and lurks around them and shines through them, in glimpses of metaphor, and connotation, and story.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“That’s because I’m dead on my feet. It’s been a long night as well as a wasted one. Speaking of which, you should get up to bed.”
“Oh, because you’re tired? Shouldn’t you go to bed?”
“Who taught you to answer back to your elders and betters?” His eyebrows raised, but his eyes were twinkling.
“Someone who also told me that just because someone is your elder doesn’t mean they’re your better.”
“It can’t be me, then. I’m your elder, and I think I’m wonderful.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“There is not a poem on earth that doesn't make sense to anyone.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“Men are easily impressed by other men.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“Magic needed conviction. It asked for your whole heart, and promised nothing back.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“Kind people don't make things happen. They try to prevent bad things from happening, and they fail, and they live in fear of that failure. So do those under their protection”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“Understanding a person wasn’t always the same as forgiving them.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“But she was learning through the confusion of her own feelings that love didn't mean you saw a person clearly.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“We love Dickens because he tell us stories, and because he tell us that we are all stories. We are. We are more than stories, of course. But we have to start somewhere. And there are many worse places to start than, 'Chapter One: I am Born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that stations will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“Rowan’s idea of perfect tea was strong enough to melt half a spoon and keep the other half awake for weeks.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“We’ve read our own myths into the world.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“What you need to understand about protagonists, Sutherland, is that we’re all busy with our own plots. We can’t help it; we’re not used to sharing our stories.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“Mirrors show what’s there,” Rowan had told her once. It was after she’d read Dracula and wanted to know if it was true that vampires didn’t have reflections. “I’ve never heard of anything not showing in one. More likely if a vampire looked in a mirror, he’d see himself as he truly was, fangs, wrinkles and whatever else. More’s the pity. It would be nice if mirrors lied when you look in them.”
“You think you look wonderful in mirrors,” Biddy had said to him sternly.
He laughed. “Only because I hardly ever look in them.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter