Here Lies Arthur Quotes

“The one thing worse than an enemy is a friend turned false.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“But boys will be boys, even the ones who are only girls dressed up: That's one of the rules of the world.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“They’re only stories,” he would say, “What do stories matter?” But he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Myrddin that in the end stories are all that matter.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“But the look on his face was so strange that I hadn't the heart to take his story away from him. He believed it, see. He believed the old gods were on Arthur's side just as he believed that winter would follow autumn and the sun would rise tomorrow. And I thought that maybe that believing would make him strong and brave and lucky when the fighting came, and maybe without it he'd be killed, or turn and run away, which was worse than being killed. So I kept quiet.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“The small lives of women don't make for good stories. That's why there were no girls in the stories Myrddin told, unless they were there as a prize for the hero to win at the end of his adventures.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“And isn't that what all boys want and all men, too? Just to be taken seriously?”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur

“In the old days, I'd never given a thought to the future, and not much to the past. I'd lived simply in the now. I'd been happy if I had enough to eat, and nobody was hitting me. I'd been miserable when I was cold and frightened when I was ill, but mostly I gave no more thought than an animal did to what might happen tomorrow, or next week. Just an animal walking about on two legs, that's all I was till Myrddin changed me. It seemd to me sometimes I'd been happier that way.”
― Philip Reeve, Here Lies Arthur