Quotes from More Than This

“A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Know yourself and go in swinging.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you’ve got to do is find a way to live there.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“There's always beauty, if you know where to look.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“People ask for what they need in different ways. Sometimes by not even asking for it at all.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“He's seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them, all of those seemingly endless possibilities, not fictional, but real, out there, existing, right now. There is so much more out there than just the world he knows, so much more than his tiny Washington town, so much more than even London. Or England. Or hell, for that matter.

So much more that he'll never see. So much more that he'll never get to. So much that he can only glimpse enough of to know that it's forever beyond his reach.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“But imagine there’s this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows it’s there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“It was solitude, but it was solitude that wasn't lonely. Solitude that could sort things out. And he hadn't had that in ages.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Life does not have to go how you think it will,” Tomasz says. “Not even when you are very sure what is going to happen.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“He wanted something, he realizes now. Wanted an answer other than the ones he’d been given. Wanted to find out this whole world had some purpose, some particular purpose. For him.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Seth,” she says, “wherever you are, it’s okay. You can come back from it. Whatever happened to you down there, whatever the world looks like now, that’s not how it always looks. That’s not how it’s always going to look. There’s more. There’s always more. Whatever you see, wherever you are, we’re still here with you. Me and Tommy.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there’s room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Something I chose to forget because it didn’t fit in with how shit everything was.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“No, life didn't always go how you thought it might.
Sometimes it didn't make any sense at all.
You've just got to find a way to live there anyway...”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Whatever the world looks like now. That's not always how it's going to look. There's more. There's always more.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Know yourself and go in swinging, if it hurts when you hit, it might be real, too.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“People see stories everywhere,” Regine says. “That’s what my father used to say. We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn’t true.” She glances back at Seth. “We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we’d go crazy.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“And at first it's okay, you know, not perfect, but okay, and you get used to it. Then it gets a little worse, and you get used to that, too. Then one day, you wake up and you don't have the first freakin' clue how it got that bad.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“How do you like them apples, you piece of shit?”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Now that I know there’s more? I want to have more. If there really is more to life, I want to live all of it. And why shouldn’t all of us? Don’t we deserve that?”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“He’s uncertain what’s going to happen next. But he is certain that that’s actually the point. If this is all a story, then that’s what the story means. If it isn’t a story, then the exact same is true. But as his friends begin the final steps, pressing buttons, answering questions on a screen, he thinks that what is forever certain is that there’s always more. Always.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“What I do know is that if you give a human being a chance to be stupid and violent, then they're going to take it, every time. No matter where they are.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“Oh, it was real, all right,” she says. “We lived it; we were there. If you go through something and put up with it even if you want to get away from it more than anything in the whole world, then it was definitely bloody real.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

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“Waldo inhaled deeply, staring at the ceiling. It was at times like this that he was at his worst. His mind, while indecisive, was also capable of producing the most detailed, fantastic daydreams imaginable, and with the mysterious disappearance of his grandfather as fodder, his speculations grew even more intense and far-fetched than usual. On the other hand, the logical part of his brain, underdeveloped as it was, went almost entirely untapped in such a situation. Waldo was literally frozen into inaction by his chemical makeup, and this was apparent in the number of cigarettes he lit, the number of sighs he expelled, and the number of times his helpless fingers alternated between nervously tapping the coffee table and running through his unkempt hair.
All that night, Waldo remained awake, deep in unproductive thought, routinely walking back and forth from the living room to the front porch, where he would take a seat in the old-fashioned swing and smoke heavily. The blissful suburban setting, especially on spring nights like this, when the crickets chirped so lustily, and the porch swing creaked so reassuringly in the warm breeze, was perfect for conjuring up bold new fantasies.”
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