275 Quotes by Robin McKinley

One doesn’t generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.

I feel like a potato that’s recently been mashed,“she said.

The burden she carried was different from yours, and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy, although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.

Post-traumatic shock, phooey. Seemed to me the trauma was trotting right along with me, like a dog on a leash with its owner. I was the dog. I.

Aunt and Katriona kept a few chickens, but the only other domestic animal they had – if either “domestic” or “had” was applicable – was Flinx, their not-a-house-cat. He was presently a fat tortoiseshell puddle sprawled in the sunlight a few rows over. Since he was only crushing a few nonessential greens, which would regrow anyway, they let him be.

He didn’t look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.

What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children’s or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.

Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn’t be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.

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.