Philip Reeve > Quotes

“Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don't.”
― Philip Reeve

“You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“Fever jumped aside just in time to dodge the shower of urine, and stumbled into the path of a religious procession - celebrants in robes and pointed hats whirling and clapping and chanting the name of some old-world prophet, 'Hari, Hari! Hari Potter!'”
― Philip Reeve, Fever Crumb

“Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.
"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well...”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“The one thing worse than an enemy is a friend turned false.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“he cut through the 21st Century Gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal headed gods of lost America”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“Was this what falling in love was like? Not something big and amazing that you knew about straight away, like in a story, but a slow thing that crept over you in waves until you woke up one day and found that you were head-over-heels with someone quite unexpected”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“That's what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation.”
― Philip Reeve, A Darkling Plain

“The old curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“Hey!” he said. “That’s one of my best shirts!” “So?” she replied without looking up. “It’s one of my best legs.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up!”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“She wanted to stop, but she was riding a wave of memory and it was carrying her backward to that night, that room, and the blood that had spattered her mother's star charts like the map of a new constellation.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“He smiled faintly, like somebody who had never seen a smile, but had read a book on how to do it.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“You know, sometimes a thing, a system, a creation grows so old, and corrupt, and weighed down by its own baggage, that all you can do is change it. Move on. Start afresh. It's frightening, but it has to be done.”
― Philip Reeve, Railhead

“It will be all right, Tom. Wherever we go now, whatever becomes of us, we'll be together, and it will all be all right.”
― Philip Reeve, A Darkling Plain

“Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.”
― Philip Reeve, Fever Crumb

“The trouble with space is, there's so much of it.

An ocean of blackness without any shore.

A neverending nothing.

And here, all alone in the million billion miles of midnight, is one solitary moving speck. A fragile parcel filled with sleeping people and their dreams.”
― Philip Reeve, Cakes in Space

“I felt a little like saying 'Eeeeeeeeek!' myself, but seeing Myrtle so afraid reminded me that I was British, and must be brave.”
― Philip Reeve, Larklight

“But that’s what bravery is, my dear. The overcoming of fear. If you’re not afraid, it doesn’t count.”
― Philip Reeve, Infernal Devices

“That's impossible,' said Fever, Engineerishly.”
― Philip Reeve, Fever Crumb

“And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“Boo-Boo Pennyroyal did not like her male and female slaves to mingle. In the operas that she adored, young people brought together in tragic circumstances were forever falling in love with each other and then throwing themselves off things (cliffs, mostly, but sometimes battlements, or rooftops, or the brinks of volcanoes). Boo-Boo was fond of her slaves, and it pained her to think of them plummeting in pairs off the edges of Cloud 9, so she nipped all tragic love affairs firmly in the bud by forbidding the girls and boys to speak to one another. Of course, young people being what they were, girls sometimes fell in love with other girls, or boys with boys, but that never happened in the operas, so Boo-Boo didn't notice.”
― Philip Reeve, Infernal Devices

“Oenone had found the chapel by accident, and was not certain what kept drawing her back to it. She was not a Christian. Few people were anymore, except in Africa, and on certain islands of the outermost west. All she knew of Christians was that they worhsipped a god nailed to a cross, and what on earth was the use of a god who went around letting himself get nailed to things?”
― Philip Reeve, Infernal Devices

“But boys will be boys, even the ones who are only girls dressed up: That's one of the rules of the world.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“The Scriven men wore stack-heeled boots and pearl-studded evening coats; the ladies in their vast skirts looked like mythical creatures, half woman, half sofa.”
― Philip Reeve, Fever Crumb

“It’s called the Pyxis,” said Raven. “Don’t let the fancy name intimidate you. It just means ‘box’ in one of those Old Earth languages, Roman or Spanish or Klingon…”
― Philip Reeve, Railhead

“We must find you a new boyfriend, Wavey had kept telling her, but what if a girlfriend was what Fever needed? She felt as if she had opened the door to a room she had never noticed in a house where she'd lived all her life.”
― Philip Reeve, Scrivener's Moon

“His tunic lay on the mud nearby, but he couldn't find his shirt at all, until he crawled closer to the scarred girl and realized that she was busily tearing it into strips which she was using to bandage her wounded leg.
"Hey!" he said. "That's one of my best shirts!"
"So?" she replied without looking up. "It's one of my best legs.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines