Robin McKinley Quotes

I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.

What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing-a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?

But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leav­ing out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it.

...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.

As I have said, you have no reason to trust me, and an excellent reason not to.

Cannot a Beast be tamed?

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.

She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names.

It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don't have a life.

It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.

It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.

When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.

I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.

Her betrothed is a lout, her father is a boor; and now her brother is trailing around looking like a thunderstorm about to burst. Men are not sensible creatures.'

'Thank you,' said Robin.