"What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face."
— Kristin Cashore (Graceling)

"When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?"
— Kristin Cashore

"How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people--girls, women--went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill."
— Kristin Cashore (Graceling)

"Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks and scream if I hear any strange noises. "
— Kristin Cashore

"Lady Katsa is it?"
"Yes, Lord Prince."
"I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky."
"Yes, Lord Prince."
"I've heard you can kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger."
SHe smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince."
"Does it make it easier?"
"I don't understand you."
"To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?" "
— Kristin Cashore

"She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrolable anger, a killer that offered itself as a vessel of the king's fury.
But then it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickend by its own violence. It chastised itself for its sacagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.
A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster , did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all."
— Kristin Cashore

"It was a very hard thing to have crushed the heart, and the hopes, of a friend."
— Kristin Cashore (Fire)

"Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it."
— Kristin Cashore (Graceling)

"Right now I'd like all my troubles to stand in front of me in a straight line, and one by one I'd give each a black eye. "
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul."
— Shannon Hale (Book of a Thousand Days)

"Personally, I believe “Young Adult” to be an arbitrary title that means the book "Can be enjoyed by anyone/Has a main character who’s not quite an adult/Isn’t really boring.""
— Shannon Hale

"Its important to know stories. I felt the earth shift to make a place for you when you were born, and I came to tell you stories while you are young. And like me, you were born with a word on your tongue."
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"... If we don't tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won't believe it."
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"When you get tired of worrying and mourning your horse and trying not to be afraid, tell me and I'll do it for you a while so you can shut your eyes and sleep peaceful."
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"They finished laughing and caught their breaths, and looked at each other, and Ani thought Geric looked at her too long, as though he forgot he was looking, as though he did not wish to do anything else. She looked back. Her took heart took its time quieting down."
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"Yes, we'll yell,'Help, help us, goose girl, and bring the terrifying legion of warrior geese.'"
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone."
— Shannon Hale (Book of a Thousand Days)

"I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky."
— Shannon Hale (Book of a Thousand Days)

"They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together. "
— Shannon Hale (Book of a Thousand Days)

"You see, freedom has a way of destroying things."
— Scott Westerfeld (Extras)

"Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "make me pretty.""
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

"As a bio major, I figured "free will" meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears--neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don't use your body; it uses you."
— Scott Westerfeld (Peeps)

"Haven't you ever known someone rejected by a lover, who, consumed by rage and jealousy, never lets go? They look on from a distance, unseen but boiling inside. The emotion never seems to tire, this hatred mixed with intense obsession, even with a kind of twisted love."
— Scott Westerfeld (Peeps)

"The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit."
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

"We don't need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever."
— Philip Pullman

"I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them."
— Philip Pullman

"Does the walker choose the path or the path choose the walker?"
— Garth Nix (Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr)

"'Please,' said Lirael . . . 'I think I would like to work in this Library.'
'The Library,' repeated Sanar, looking troubled. 'That can be dangerous to a girl of fourteen. Or a woman of forty, for that matter.'"
— Garth Nix (Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr)

"Touchstone watched, suddenly conscious that he probably only had five seconds left to be alone with Sabriel, to say something, to say anything. Perhaps the last five seconds they ever would have alone together.
I am not afraid, he said to himself.
"I love you," he whispered. "I hope you don't mind.""
— Garth Nix (Sabriel)

"The visions are fragmented and a dark cloud spreads like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures."
— Garth Nix (Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr)

"Five Great Charters knit the land

Together linked, hand in hand

One in the people who wear the crown

Two in the folk who keep the Dead down

Three and Five became stone and mortar

Four sees all in frozen water."
— Garth Nix

"Choosers will be beggers if the beggings not their chosing. "
— Garth Nix (Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr)

"Do not tarry, do not stop, no matter what happens."
— Garth Nix (Sabriel)

"When the dead do walk seek water's run,
for this the Dead will always shun. Swift river's best or broadest lake
to ward the dead and have and make.
If water fails thee, fire's thy friend,
if neither guards it will be thy end."
— Garth Nix

"I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."
— Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass)

"There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them."
— Philip Pullman

"There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book."
— Philip Pullman

"People are too complicated to have simple labels."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"Iorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must.
Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"'That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious."
— Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass)

"So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep."
— Tamora Pierce (In the Hand of the Goddess)

"They always forget the last part of that saying: curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back" its something to that effect anyway."
— Tamora Pierce

"Threats are the last resort of a man with no vocabulary!"
— Tamora Pierce (Lady Knight)

"Lord Raoul asked me to tell you that if you get yourself killed, he will never speak to you again."
— Tamora Pierce

"If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught."
— Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Choice)

""Kel: He says he's changed.
Neal: I suppose he could have changed, I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil.
Kel: You do look yellow around the edges. I hadn't wanted to bring it up.
Neal: We daffodils like to have things brought up. It reminds us of spring.""
— Tamora Pierce (Page)

"I think it's fair rude to make him a tree and not know what kind he is."
— Tamora Pierce

"When people say a knight's job is all glory, I laugh and laugh and laugh. Often I can stop laughing before they edge away and talk about soothing drinks."
— Tamora Pierce

""When in doubt, shoot the wizard.""
— Tamora Pierce