Patricia A. McKillip > Quotes

“Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head

“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, In The Forests of Serre

“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.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld

“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 can't 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-”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Riddlemaster of Hed

“She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owl's eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Solstice Wood

“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.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Harpist in the Wind

“When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing ... there is no room in you for fear.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Changeling Sea

“Shall I add a man to my collection?”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“There are no simple words. I don't know why I thought I could hide anything behind language.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe

“Then you will have to trust me. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope, trust me.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“What?" It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Solstice Wood

“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.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Harpist in the Wind

“But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“Peace, tremulous, unexpected, sent a taproot out of nowhere into Morgan's heart.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“I came back."
"Suppose you hadn't?"
"I came back! Why can't you understand, instead of thinking as though your brains are made of oak. Athol's son, with his hair and eyes and vision -"
"No!" Tristan said sharply. Eliard's fist, raised and knotted, halted in midair. Morgon dropped his face again against his knees. Eliard shut his eyes.
"Why do you think I'm so angry?" he whispered.
"I know."
"Do you? Even - even after six months I still expect to hear her voice unexpectedly, or see him coming out of the barn, or in from the fields at dusk. And you? How will I know, now, that when you leave Hed, you'll come back? You could have died in that tower for the sake of a stupid crown and left us watching for the ghost of you, too. Swear you'll never do anything like that again."
"I can't."
"You can."
Morgon raised his head, looked at Eliard. "How can I make one promise to you and another to myself? But I swear this: I will always come back."
"How can you -"
"I swear it.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Riddle-Master: The Complete Trilogy

“The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said. Now. Then: Patience, patience. 'You are flowers,' their mouths said, 'You are jewels, you are golden dreams.' Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart, and I will keep you there... ”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Harrowing the Dragon

“What do you think love is- a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you choose into your darkness, but you will see me always beneath you, no matter how far away, with my face turned to you. My heart is in your heart. I gave it to you with my name that night and you are its guardian, to treasure it, or let it whither and die. I do not understand you. I am angry with you. I am hurt and helpless, but nothing will fill the ache of the hollowness in me where your name would echo if I lost you.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's 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. It's not nice, and it's not fair.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there. -Cyrin”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“I would be mute, beautiful, changless as the earth for you. I would be your memory, without age, always innocent, always waiting in the King's white house. I would do that for you and no other man inthe relm. But it would be a lie and I will do anything but lie to you - I swear that. ”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“He closed his grade book and asked hopefully, "What inspired you? Was it Hawthorne?"

I stared at him. He had to be kidding.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Night Gift

“The moon grew full, then slowly pared itself down until it shriveled into a ghostly boat riding above the roiling dark. Then it fell out of the sky. They climbed into it, left land behind, and floated out to sea.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Song for the Basilisk

“Do you become in visible?'
'No. I'm there, if you know how to look. I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.'
'Be thankful,' Gavin advised with a laugh, 'that so far the music is still being played and everyone is trying to dance in harmony.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“Branches grew from his hands, his hair. His thoughts tangled like roots in the ground. He strained upward. Pitch ran like tears down his back. His name formed his core; ring upon ring of silence built around it. His face rose high above the forests. Gripped to earth, bending to the wind's fury, he disappeared within himself, behind the hard, wind-scrolled shield of his experiences.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“He exuded ambiguities she decided, that was his fascination.
His mouth spoke; his eyes said something other: his smile belied everything....
He played with the language of the Circle of Days like a child with an arsenal of twigs....
His music said otherwise it seemed to echo through time out of a past as old as the stones on the hill. He lied with every note he played.
Or in his music he finally told the truth.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bards of Bone Plain

“Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombria's past. Parts of the city's past lay within time's 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.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow

“There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow

“Then you will have to trust me. Beyondlogic, beyond reason, beyond hope, trust me.”
― Patricia A. McKillip

“Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Riddle-Master: The Complete Trilogy

“What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't 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 can't get out and we can't get in to free her.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“The message, which one fall or another of the coin would eventually give him, was how to get himself out of his chamber and into Nepenthe's, so that he could tell her why he had not come to tell her why he had not come.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born.
Here I am no longer my own secret.
Will you let me stay?”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn