Patrick Ness > Quotes

“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.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“We are the choices we make.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness.
It's your best strength.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?

"I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."

The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“I wish I had a hundred years, she said, very quietly. A hundred years I could give to you.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Stories don't always have happy endings."

This stopped him. Because they didn't, did they? That's one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.

And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“You were merely wishing for the end of pain, the monster said. Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "I think maybe everybody falls," I say. "I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking."
I pull on her arms gently to make sure she's listening.
"I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.”
― Patrick Ness, More Than This

“But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again. ”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Conor held tightly onto his mother.
And by doing so, he could finally let her go.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“If you speak the truth, the monster whispered in his ear, you will be able to face whatever comes.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Faith with proof is no faith at all.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“War makes monsters out of men.”
― Patrick Ness

“And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shutup, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go