Dan > Dan's Quotes

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again. ”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“The only place you belong is the place you can never go back. And so yer always alone, forever and always.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“There ain't nothing good that don't got real bad waiting to follow it.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?”
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

“We weren't arguing,” said the bear. “Because we can't talk.” Then it said, “Oops.”
― Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants

“Without pain, it feels almost like I don't have a body at all, almost like I'm a ghost, sitting in a chair, blinded and eternal. Like I'm dead already. Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“Close enough so I can see the smile, a smile I know full well, a smile that clubs, a smile that beats, a smile that dominates.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“But the Spackle War was over a long time ago, wasn't it?”

“Thirteen years now.”

“Thirteen years where you could have righted a wrong.”

She finally looks at me. “Life is only that simple when you're young, my girl.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. “We are the choices we make.” It takes me a second to realize she's just said goodbye.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“She turns to me sharply. “To live _is_ to fight,” she snaps. “To preserve life is to fight _everything_ that man stands for.” She takes an angry huff of air. “And now her, too, with all the bombs. I fight them every time I bandage the blackened eye of a woman, every time I remove shrapnel from a bomb victim.”

Her voice has raised but she lowers it again. “That's my war,” she says. “That's the war I'm fighting.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“Patience,” she says again. But she says it impatiently.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“The Mayor's wrong -
He's wrong forever and ever -
It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“It's always darkest before the dawn, Todd.”

I look at him, baffled. “No, it ain't! What kinda stupid saying is that? It's always lightest before the dawn!”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“You felt the excitement when we chased them up the hill,” the Mayor's saying. “I saw it. It blazed through your Noise like a fire. Every man in the army felt the same thing. You're never more alive than in battle.”

“Never more dead after,” I say.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.”

“But if you don't at least try to live them,” Bradley says, “then there's no point in living at all.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“What if it'd been Simone down there instead of Todd?” I say.

And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don't think are returned. “You're right,” he says, “I don't know. I hope I'd make the right choice, but Viola it is a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“That's because the desire of most folks is to be told what to do.” He looks back across the square, covered in tents and soldiers and townsfolk all huddled together. “People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers’ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You’d be surprised.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls