Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.
Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.
Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.
What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.
Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.
There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.
She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.
Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
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Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.
This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.
You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.
In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.
I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?
You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.
Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.
Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!
I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?
Books were safer than other people anyway.
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.
A book is a dream that you hold in your hands." (As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)
Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.
Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.
You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.
That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.
We...we could be friends.' We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing African elephants, but we're not. At least, I'M not.
An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.
All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.
He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.
If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.
Every hour wounds. The last one kills.
Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.
Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters.
I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.
Even nothing cannot last forever.
You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.
When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.
To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.
Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.
Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.
Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.
A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question.
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Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')
Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.
And did I pass?" The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left the younger woman said, "You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.
I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.
I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
What power would hell have if those imprisoned here would not be able to dream of heaven?
You don't get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd.
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Biting's excellent. It's like kissing - only there is a winner.
I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.
I miss you', he admitted. 'I'm here', she said. 'That's when I miss you most. When you're here. When you aren't here, when you're just a ghost of the past or a dream from another life, it's easier then.
He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.
People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.
The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.
The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.
You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?' 'REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
There's none so blind as those who will not listen.
Libraries are our friends.
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.
Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.
