Quotes by Patricia A. McKillip

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.

I wish you were small again, so I could hold you in my arms and comfort you. But you are grown, and you know that for some things there is no comfort.

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.

...that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.

If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You cant turn back. There is now answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.-Deth to Morgon, Prince of Hed-

You--cannot ever be certain of those you love--that they will not hurt you, even loving you. But to make me certain to love you, will be to take away any love I might give you freely.

I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.

I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.

Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombrias past. Parts of the citys past lay within times reach, beneath the streets in great old limestone tunnels: the hovels and mansions and sunken river that Ombria shrugged off like a forgotten skin, and buried beneath itself through the centuries.

A net of words, he said at last, is more powerful than a net of rope.

I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you. When you opened your gates to me, I was home.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

What are the thorns really telling her? Its why she wont let us see them, why she clings to them--or they cling to her--as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she cant get out and we cant get in to free her.

A librarian had found the baby sitting abandoned on the sheer edge of the world; the librarians kept her. That proved shrewd. Nepenthe had drooled on words, talked at them, and tried to eat them until she learned to take them into her eyes instead of her mouth.

I need you to forgive me. And then perhaps I can begin to forgive myself. There is no one but you who can do that either.

Thats the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.

Kir stood close to his father, watching. He seemed, Peri realized, finally becalmed; already he looked more like his mother, as if he were relinquishing his human experience. He found her looking at him wistfully; he gave her a sea-smile. She swallowed a briny taste of sadness in her throat. Already he was leaving her.

But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- its stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. Hes trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. Its not nice, and its not fair.