Katherine Rundell > Quotes

“I do, I’m afraid, understand books far more readily than I understand people. Books are so easy to get along with.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“I think, actually, everyone starts out with some strange in them. It's just whether or not you decide to keep it.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Books crowbar the world open for you.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Only weak thinkers do not love the sky.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“I know these sorts of people. They're not men. They're mustaches with idiots attached.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Stories can start revolutions.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“People say we can't do anything about the way the world is; they say it's set in stone. I say it looks like stone, but it's mostly paint and cardboard.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“It's inhuman to take your books away before you know the end.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“Never ignore a possible. ~Charles”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Perhaps, she thought, that’s what love does. It’s not there to make you feel special. It’s to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, she thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie—two words for the same thing.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Wolves, and stars, and snow: Those things made sense.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“You have been the great green adventure of my life. Without you my days would be unlit.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“The set of her chin suggested she might have slain a dragon before breakfast. The look in her eyes suggested she might, in fact, have eaten it.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“It was what her mother had always been. A place to put down her heart. A resting stop to recover her breath. A set of stars and maps.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“But it's a child! You're a man!"

"Your powers of observation are formidable," said Charles. "You are a credit to your optician.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Reading is almost exactly like a cartwheel; it turns the world upside down and leaves you breathless”
― Katherine Rundell

“Adults are taught not to believe anything unless it is boring or ugly.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Wolves are the witches of the animal world.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“It is difficult to believe extraordinary things.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Do not wait for people to be flawless before you allow yourself to adore them. Adore them anyway. (p. 169)”
― Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures

“But those coins are wishes! You’re stealing other people’s wishes!”
The look Matteo gave her was so flinty, she could have chipped a tooth on it. “If you have money to waste on wishes, you don’t need the wishes as badly as I need the money.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“Humans, on the whole, Feo could take or leave; there was only one person she loved properly, with the sort of fierce pride that gets people into trouble, or prison, or history books.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“Children’s novels...spoke and still speak of hope. They say: look, this is what bravery looks like. This is what generosity looks like. They tell me, through the medium of wizards and lions and talking spiders, that this world we live in is a world of people who tell jokes and work and endure. Children’s books say: the world is huge. They say: hope counts for something. They say: bravery will matter, wit will matter, empathy will matter, love will matter. These things may or may not be true. I do not know. I hope they are.”
― Katherine Rundell, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise

“You will never be tougher than you are now. Children are the toughest creatures on the planet. They endure.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“If hope is a thing with feathers, then libraries are wings.”
― Katherine Rundell, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise

“Cowardice is for cowards. Fear is for people with brains and eyes and functioning nerve endings.”
― Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder

“But Christopher didn't have the words, then, to explain what, nonetheless, he knew: that sometimes, if you are among the very lucky, a spark of understanding cuts like lightning across the space between two people. 'It's a defibrillator for the heart. And it toughens you. It nourishes you. And the word we've chosen for it (which is an insufficient word for being so abruptly upended in a new and finer place) is friendship!”
― Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures

“She hated official letters. They made her feel nervous. The people who wrote them sounded like they had filing cabinets where their hearts should be.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“The baby was almost certainly one year old. They knew this because of the red rosette pinned to her front, which read, 1!

"Or rather," said Charles Maxim, "the child is either one year old or she has come first in a competition. I believe babies are rarely keen participants in competitive sport. Shall we therefore assume it is the former?”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers