Robin McKinley citations

“The story is always better than your ability to write it.”

“The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.”

“[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.”

“… My friend, there are some things that I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find the answers.”

“When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.”

“As I have said, you have no reason to trust me, and an excellent reason not to.”

“Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.”

“But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leav­ing out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it.”

“You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.”

“Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.”

“He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.”

“One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.”

“And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket.”

“It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.”

“… there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.”

“There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance.”

“There are things you don't want to know you can do”

“He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.”

“It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.”

“Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.”

“I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?”

“The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.”

“I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.”

“People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.”

“The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?”

“If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”

“Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.”

“… like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?”

“Never assume. Never make plans. Keep doing the press-ups and deep knee bends: you'll need all your strength and flexibility when your life suddenly implodes. Maybe it won't — some people do lead enchanted lives — but odds are that it will. Some time.”