“Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“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, quote from Rose Daughter
“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, quote from Rose Daughter
“They are all so beautiful,' she said.
He looked down at her. 'Not half so beautiful as you are,' he said. 'Nor do they speak to me, nor touch me. Even Fourpaws will not touch me. Beauty, will you marry me?”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“She looked up at once, pierced to the heart by the sorrow in his voice and knowing, from the question and the sorrow together, that he had no notion of what had just happened to her, nor why. From that she pitied him so greatly that she cupped her hands again to hold a little of the salamander's heat, not for serenity but for the warmth of friendship. But as she felt the heat again running through her, she knew at once it bore a different quality. It had been a welcome invader the first time, only moments before; but already it had become a constituent of her blood, intrinsic to the marrow of her bones, and she heard again the salamander's last words to her: Trust me. At that moment she knew that this Beast would not have sent such misery as her father's illness to harry or to punish, knew too that the Beast would keep his promise to her, and to herself she made another promise to him, but of that promise she did not yet herself know. Trust me sang in her blood, and she could look in the Beast's face and see only that he looked at her hopefully.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“She was ashamed. She would not--she would not--be frightened of him: he was what he was, and he had made a promise he would keep.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“What … you’re a hedgehog!” It stirred at her touch and then curled up tighter. “You’re a very small hedgehog. And you shouldn’t be wandering round enchanted palaces looking for adventures.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“There was something very odd about the carpet this morning… More hedgehogs? Many more hedgehogs? Positively a lake of hedgehogs?”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“She wondered if her father had awakened yet, if he had missed her, if Jeweltongue would tell him she was only out in the garden, if Tea-cosy's wretchedness would give them all away immediately. She wondered if she had been right to guess that her father would not mend till she left--and that he would mend when she did. Had the Beast sent his illness? Did he watch them from his palace? What a sorcerer could and could not do could never quite be relied on--not even always by the sorcerer. She could hate him--easily she could hate him--for the misery of it if he had sent it. If he kept his promises like a man, did he suppose that they mere humans as they were, would keep theirs any less? The price was high for one stolen rose, but they would pay it. If he had sent her father's illness to beat them into acquiescence, she would hate him for it.
The bitterness of her thoughts weighted her down till she had to stop walking. She looked again at the beech trees and, not waiting for a gap this time, fought her way through to the nearest and leant against it, turning her head so that her cheek was against the bark. The Beast is a Beast, even if he keeps his promises; how could she guess how a Beast thinkds, especially one who is so great a sorcere? It was foolish to talk of hating him--foolish and wasteful. What had happened had happened, like anything else might happen, like a bit of paper giving you a new home when you had none finding its way into your hand, like a company of the ugliest, worst-tempered plants you'd ever seen opening their flowers and becoming rose-bushes, the most beautiful, lovable plants you've ever seen. Perhaps it was the Beast's near presence that made her own roses grow. Did she not owe him something for that if that were the case? It was a curious thing, she thought sadly, how one is no longer satisfied with what one was or had if one has discovered something better. She could not now happily live without roses, although she had never seen a rose before three years ago.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
“I will miss the horses," said Beauty a little wistfully.
"Perhaps you will become fond of the goat," said Jeweltongue. "Or even the chickens."
"Does one ever grow fond of chickens?" said Beauty dubiously. "Perhaps the goat.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Rose Daughter
Robin McKinley
Born place: in Warren, Ohio, The United States
Born date November 16, 1952
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“find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it. Tess is one of the most irritating young women in Victorian fiction. Won”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient
“It is in the nature of things to want to believe that what's familiar and comfortable will last forever.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“I must learn to love you.”
― C.G. Jung, quote from The Red Book: Liber Novus
“Darwin concluded that language ability is “an instinctive tendency to acquire an art,” a design that is not peculiar to humans but seen in other species such as song-learning birds. A language instinct may seem jarring to those who think of language as the zenith of the human intellect and who think of instincts as brute impulses that compel furry or feathered zombies to build a dam or up and fly south. But one of Darwin’s followers, William James, noted that an instinct possessor need not act as a “fatal automaton.” He argued that we have all the instincts that animals do, and many more besides; our flexible intelligence comes from the interplay of many instincts competing. Indeed, the instinctive nature of human thought is just what makes it so hard for us to see that it is an instinct: It takes…a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside-down? The common man can only say, “Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made for all eternity to be loved!” And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects…. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.”
― Steven Pinker, quote from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
“Because nine years ago, I walked up to the most beautiful girl in the bar, and tonight she's still the only person I want to talk to.”
― Julie James, quote from About That Night
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