Quotes By Author: Robin McKinley

“So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town–the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them–and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.”

“I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.”

“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.”

“The big difference between my mom and me– besides the fact that she is dead normal and I’m a magic-handling freak– is that she’s the real thing. She may have a slight problem seeing other people’s points of view, but she’s honest about it. She’s a brass-bound bitch because she believes she knows best. I’m a brass-bound bitch because I don’t want anyone getting close enough to find out what a whiny little knot of naked nerve endings I really am. ”

“Oh, why does compassion weaken us?’It doesn’t, really … Somewhere where it all balances out – don’t the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? – if we could go there, you could see it doesn’t. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn’t have a clue that it’s a tree; it’s the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.”

“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.”

“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.”