“They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Maybe hearts don't ever stop breaking once broken.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It's the worst kind of regret.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Blame is a human concept, one of its blackest and most selfish and self-binding.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Little girls aren't naturally lost," Karen said, frowning as she scanned saucepans. "Someone makes them that way.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“It may cost you, my Queen. It may cost you dear."
"All the best journeys do, faun.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Blame is something that is shared and denied in equal measures.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“If you can't pray it away, it's not a real problem.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Tread carefully, Marty. I mean it. The world has completely changed around you while you weren't looking.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Marty: Dad's right about you. You got lost on your journey somewhere.
Adam: That's what everyone says who never bothered to go on a journey in the first place.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“And there. The power of a word. The power of one word. That's where it all changes.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“People with really stiff morals are easier to tip over.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Maybe there didn’t have to be any other reasons. Maybe love made you stupid. Maybe loneliness did.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Raising his eyes to look directly into Linus's face was maybe the scariest thing he'd had to do all day long, but it was only the free-falling terror that always accompanied hope.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Adam’s stomach was tumbling with how much Linus knew and how he’d found it all out (it would turn out he knew as much as nearly everyone else in the school, which was a lot, but it also turned out that – in that unreachable, possible world – most of them actually liked Adam or at least didn’t actively wish him harm, so they’d given his sorrow some space; when Adam thought about it now, it still made his head swim, still made him blush, still made him wish he could crawl under a blanket and die there forever) – but looking at Linus, he saw no malice, no gossip, saw instead someone who might actually know.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“She can smell him now, a smudge of unwashed skin, poverty, extreme loneliness. She takes the can, still holding his hand, unrolling it, running a finger across its weathered palm.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Why did everyone no longer a teenager automatically dismiss any feeling you had then? Who cared if he’d grow out of it? That didn’t make it any less true in those painful and euphoric days when it was happening.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“If she needed him, he'd be there instantly, no questions asked, and he knew she'd do the same. She was here now. They had their bulgogi. This is what a family was. Or should be.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It’s the worst kind of regret.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“But here, now, again, this was more than the body, or the mind, or the personality. It wasn't holy, that was a whole other mess, but it was something that could be touched only here.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“But then she thinks, feels, reaches out, and knowing exactly what blame is - a human construct, one of its blackest and more selfish and self-blinding - she can find further strands of it, emanating in all directions, for blame is something that is shared but denied in equal measure.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“an act that didn't feel like penetration, but like combination”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
Patrick Ness
Born place: in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, The United States
Born date January 1, 1971
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“Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent.
Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
“There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.”
― George Eliot, quote from Adam Bede
“...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.”
― Marisha Pessl, quote from Night Film
“The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.”
― Barry Hughart, quote from Bridge of Birds
“People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
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The Life of Anna: Th...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
