Lynne Reid Banks > Quotes

“The very people you trusted most could become like strangers in their longing...”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Secret of the Indian

“Most men, if you just tell them what to do in a businesslike fashion, will follow directions without thinking about it. One proceeds on the assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they do.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Secret of the Indian

“The Spring can be more painful than any other time of the year. Summer is lazy and indifferent. Autumn is demanding and invigorating. Winter is numb and self-contained, but Spring has none of the palliatives. Every emotional nerve is close to the surface. Every sound and sight, every touch of the air is a summons to feel, to open your doors, to let life possess you and do what it likes with you.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room

“the fun of keeping things in them. He was not a very tidy boy in general, but he did like arranging things in cupboards and drawers and then opening them later and finding them just as he’d left them.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“That it's possible to be against the circus, not because you're afraid to die there, but because it's wicked and wrong.
~Aurelia, 152”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Tiger, Tiger

“Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked with racing cloud shadows; the maltreated holly tree had stopped weeping; the green mould on the graves had dried to an unsuggestive grey.

The church could never look cheerful. It was too black, and its voice, the bell, always said 'Fu - ner -al... fu - ner- al...' even when it was only calling them to hear one of their Papa's dramatic sermons.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Dark Quartet: The Story of the Brontës

“Omri refused to get involved in an argument. He was somehow scared that if he talked about the Indian, something bad would happen. In fact, as the day went on and he longed more and more to get home, he began to feel certain that the whole incredible happening—well, not that it hadn’t happened, but that something would go wrong. All his thoughts, all his dreams were centered on the miraculous, endless possibilities opened up by a real, live, miniature Indian of his very own. It would be too terrible if the whole thing turned out to be some sort of mistake.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“cupboard. The strange little key, which had been his great-grandmother’s,”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Return of the Indian

“Among the innumerable books on Addy’s shelves was one by Ernest Hemingway in which I found these words: ‘What is moral is what you feel good after. What is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Backward Shadow

“When I was your age I met a man older than myself, quite a bit older. I fell in love with him. Really in love. I know people say it’s just puppy love at that age, but I was in love properly. It lasted for years. It was the most powerful feeling I can ever remember. At that age one has no defenses. It just overwhelmed me.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Melusine

“With hands that shook, Omri probed into the depths of the chest till he found the box-within-a-box-within-a-box.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Return of the Indian

“Things like this—love-relationships—need a certain minimum of proximity to keep them going.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Backward Shadow

“There’s nothing, of course, more damaging and hurtful to the psyche than that—searching grimly for things to despise and revile in a person you once loved. You may destroy the beloved image but at the same time you destroy part of the basis of your self-respect, plus a whole vital chunk out of your past. Because, if he is hateful now, what aberration once caused you to waste so much love on him?”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Backward Shadow

“What did I tell you when you were little girl? The only way we women can get through our lives honorably is with courage and resignation, both.
~168”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Tiger, Tiger

“Beard,” said Patrick, which was their school slang for “I don’t believe you.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“It's funny how, when you really want to say something bitchy and cutting to someone who's been bitchy to you, you can't think of anything till afterwards. When there's no real call for it, you come suddenly out with a piece of 9-carat bitchery that shakes even you.”
― Lynne Reid Banks

“FACT The Native Americans invented the game lacrosse.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“Love lost by one moment’s explicit unfairness can’t be won back by trying to justify it”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Backward Shadow

“Funny to think that he would certainly have done it, only a week ago, without thinking about the dangers.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“soap”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“Work, that supposed panacea, the great Taker-of-Your-Mind-Off, proved just about as totally useless and in fact irrelevant as those ‘Easy Childbirth’ theories are in the face of the real thing.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Backward Shadow

“Even to be impaled by a happy fate makes you jerk against the knowledge of inevitability, of final commitment.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Two Is Lonely

“I know what is wrong. You havn't decided what you want.' She'd underlined this many times. 'Terribly important to draw up a balance sheet every now and then, debits and credits. Decide what's important, what's worth fighting for. Don't drift, ever. Decide then act. If you fail well at least you tried. Don't know what you want so can't advise you how to get it.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room

“I put my chin up and tried to stiffen my upper lip, but found I didn't seem to have any muscles in it.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room

“You touch—I kill!” the Indian growled ferociously.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“Little Bear looked at him steadily and nodded. Omri opened the flap and Indian and horse stepped out into the morning sunlight.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“incredulously.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“here!”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“He was just under three inches tall. His blue-black hair, done in a plait and pressed to his head by a colored headband, gleamed in the sun. So did the minuscule muscles of his tiny naked torso, and the skin of his arms. His legs were covered with buckskin leggings, which had some decoration on them too small to see properly. He wore a kind of bandolier across his chest and his belt seemed to be made of several strands of some shiny white beads. Best of all, somehow, were his moccasins.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard

“soldiers”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard