Robin McKinley Quotes

34 Sourced Quotes

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.

Robin McKinley
Mice are terribly chatty. They will chat about anything, and if there is nothing to chat about, they will chat about having nothing to chat about. Compared to mice, robins are reserved.

Robin McKinley
People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.

Robin McKinley
She poured the water, arranged some bread near enough the embers to scorch but not catch fire, and looked up at Little John. She was so accustomed to his step, to his bulk, that it took a moment to notice his face; and when she did... It was, she thought, rather like the moment it took to realize one had cut one's finger as one stared dumbly at the first drop of blood on the knife-blade. You know it is going to hurt quite a lot in a minute.

Robin McKinley
Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for....

Robin McKinley
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.

Robin McKinley
Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic—which was what all magic was—it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that...might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred.

Robin McKinley
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.

Robin McKinley
He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.

Robin McKinley
The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

Robin McKinley
What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.

Robin McKinley
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.

Robin McKinley
I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much." "But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly. I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?

Robin McKinley
But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.

Robin McKinley
Why do you tell me... so much?" Luthe considered her. "I tell you... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know—" He stopped.... "Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you.

Robin McKinley
But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.

Robin McKinley
Perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it.

Robin McKinley
Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you

Robin McKinley
It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.

Robin McKinley
[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.

Robin McKinley
It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.

Robin McKinley
The weak grey light that serves as harbinger of red and golden dawn faintly lit my window. I fumbled for a candle, found and lit it, and by its little light saw that the rose floating in the bowl was dying. It had already lost most of its petals, which floated on the water like tiny, un-seaworthy boats, deserted for safer craft. "Dear God," I said. "I must go back at once.

Robin McKinley
And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket.

Robin McKinley
She laughed at him then, because he sounded like a small boy, not like a very large grown-up Beast with a voice so deep it made the hair on the back of your neck stir when you heard it. 'But vegetables are good for you,' she said, and added caressingly, 'They make you grow up big and strong.' He smiled, showing a great many teeth. 'You see why I wish to eat no more vegetables.

Robin McKinley
And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.

Robin McKinley
All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.

Robin McKinley
Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.

Robin McKinley
Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not.

Robin McKinley
She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.

Robin McKinley
Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.

Robin McKinley