459 Quotes by Ransom Riggs

Claire mumbled into Bronwyn’s lap, “Tell us a story, Wyn. I’m scared and I don’t like this at all and I think I’d like to hear a story instead.

I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover – that these fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical ambitions – so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

From the mouths of our elders comes a fountain of wisdom.

Don’t worry, Xavier’s on the job,” said Sharon. We heard a squeak and looked down to see the rat in question with a piece of cheese in its mouth. Sharon picked him up and scolded him. “Keys, I said, not cheese!

We’re peculiar,” he replied, sounding a bit puzzled. “Aren’t you?

He proceeded to give us directions in a lilting accent, which I found enormously entertaining. I loved hearing Welsh people talk, even if half of what they said was incomprehensible to me.

To some it might’ve seemed callous, the way she boxed up her pain and set it aside, but I knew her well enough now to understand. She had a heart the size of France, and the lucky few whom she loved with it were loved with every square inch – but its size made it dangerous, too. If she let it feel everything, she’d be wrecked. So she had to tame it, shush it, shut it up. Float the worst pains off to an island that was quickly filling with them, where she would go to live one day.

She had this amazing capacity to turn sadness into anger and anger into action, which meant nothing ever kept her down for long.

He’s wearing a costume,” I whispered to Emma. Then, to the guy: “She doesn’t see a lot of movies.” “A costume?” Emma scrunched her brow. “But he’s a grown man.