Quotes from My Name Is Mina

David Almond ·  320 pages

Rating: (3.5K votes)


“Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Maybe we're all in somebody's dream. Maybe everything's a dream, and nothing else.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina



“I sit in my tree
I sing like the birds
My beak is my pen
My songs are my poems.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Yes. But sad's alright. Sad's just apart of everything”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“We stand dead still and we listen to the night. The city drones. An owl hoots and a cat howls and a dog barks and a siren wails.
We let the stars shine into us.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Sometimes children must be left alone to be still and silent, and to do.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line? Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina



“This might be heaven!
We might be living in heaven right now!
And we might be the angels!”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Some say that you should turn your face from the light of the moon. They say it makes you mad.
I turn my face towards it and I laugh.
Make me mad, I whisper. Go on, make Mina mad.
I laugh again.
Some people think that she's already mad, I think.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Mum has made a little model of Dad - it looks nothing like him, of course, at least not when I compare it with his photographs, but somehow it seems to be more like him than the photographs do.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“I love afternoons like that, like when we talk about things like metempsychosis, when we learn so much, and explore so much, and ideas grow and take flight, like the idea about the universe and the egg. I love being home-schooled, when we don't have to stick to subjects and timetables and rules.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina



“In the end she just said..... All I did was to run away for a few minutes! All I wanted was to be free!”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“Weird how I can feel so frail and tiny sometimes, and other times so brave and bold and reckless and free, and . . . Does everybody feel the same? When people get grown-up, do they always feel grown-up and sensible and sorted out and . . . And do I want to feel grown-up? Do I want to stop feeling . . . paradoxical, nonsensical? Do I want to stop being crackers? Do I want to be destrangified? O yes, sometimes I want nothing more - but it only lasts a moment, then O I want to be the strangest and crakerest of everybody.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“And I've been thinking: if the human race manages to destroy itself, as it often seems to want to do, or if some great disaster comes, as it did for the dinosaurs, then the birds will still manage to survive. When our gardens and fields and farms and woods have turned wild, when the park at the end of Falconer Road has turned into a wilderness, when our cities are in ruins, the birds will go on flying and singing and making their nests and laying their eggs and raising their young. It could be that the birds will exist for ever and for ever until the earth itself comes to an end, no matter what might happen to the other creatures. They'll sing until the end of time. So here's my thought: If there is a God, could it be that He's chosen the birds to speak for Him. Could it be true? The voice of God speaks through the beaks of birds.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop our walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


“They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house. "What on earth will you be doing with something so large?" said Mum.
"I shall live in it with my servants, of course," said Mina. "Or I shall establish a school."
"A school, my lady?"
"Yes. A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina



“A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.”
― David Almond, quote from My Name Is Mina


About the author

David Almond
Born place: in Newcastle, England, The United Kingdom
Born date May 15, 1951
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Popular quotes

“Creo que la verdad está bien en las matemáticas, en la química, en la filosofía. No en la vida. En la vida es más importante la ilusión, la imaginación, el deseo, la esperanza. Además, ¿sabemos acaso lo que es la verdad? Si yo lo digo que aquel trozo de ventana azul, digo una verdad. Pero es una verdad parcial, y por lo tanto una especie de mentira. Porque el trozo de ventana no está solo, está en una casa, en una cuidad, en un paisaje. Está rodeado del gris de ese muro de cemento, del azul claro del cielo, de aquellas nubes alargadas, de infinitas cosas más. Y si no digo todo absolutamente todo, estoy mintiendo. Pero decir todo es imposible, aun en este caso de la ventana, de un siempre trozo de la realidad física. La realidad es infinita y además infinitamente matizada, y si me olvido de un solo matiz, ya estoy mintiendo. Ahora imagínese lo que es la realidad de los seres humanos con sus complicaciones y recovecos, contradicciones y además cambiantes. Porque cambia a cada instante que pasa, y lo que éramos hace un momento no lo somos más. ¿Somos, acaso, siempre la misma persona? ¿Tenemos acaso siempre los mismos sentimientos? Se puede querer a alguien y de pronto desestimarlo y hasta detestarlo. Y si cuando lo desestimamos cometemos el error de decírselo, eso es una verdad, pero una verdad momentánea, que no será más verdad dentro de una hora o al otro día, o en otras circunstancias. Y en cambio el ser a quien se la decimos creerá que ésa es la verdad, la verdad para siempre y desde siempre. Y se hundirá en la desesperación.”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs


“The Crying Child found a Mountain where others who had suffered had gone to learn to live through letting go. They learned that one must not struggle to change the unchangeable. That the only peace to be found is the peace of acceptance.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded


“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death


“We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.

This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken


“You want to know what I believe? I believe in fate, but I also believe in free will. Meaning, there's a path, but we're free to veer away from it. The only problem is that there's no way to know whose path we're following on any given moment. Our own? Our fate's? Other people are on their on paths, too. What happens when we intersect? What happens when someone else wipes our path clean, and we're left with no road to follow? Is that fate? Is that when free will kicks in? Is the path there, but invisible?
Who the hell knows?”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost


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