275 Quotes by Robin McKinley

[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.

She had told the frog, "Certainly, anything"; and her father had brought her up to understand that she must always keep her word, the more so because as Princess there was no one who could force her to.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.

When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

My voice came out high and strange, and sticky with wretchedness: 'Why? I know about having to - *invite* - one of your kind.' For about six months when you're thirteen or fourteen it's every teenage girl's favourite story: because it's about finding out you have *power*.