275 Quotes by Robin McKinley

There were some things that took life and broke it, not merely into meaninglessness, but with active malice flung the pieces farther, into hell.

Robin: I’m sure you’ve learnt to bake, but you have not learned to handle Much. The phrases that you need my lady, are “No”, “No you can’t”, and “No, get out of here before I throw something at you”.

She had courage enough, but little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her.

He wasn’t really boring. She just wasn’t in love with him.

There are things you don’t want to know you can do.

It was daylight. I wondered dispassionately if I might be getting a sunburn, but I rarely burned anyway, and the idea in the present state of affairs, like worrying about a hangnail while you are being chased by an axe murderer, seemed so ludicrous I couldn’t be bothered.

It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog’s love, once given, is not reconsidered.

It wasn’t the work of the Chalice she minded. It was the vast unfathomable burden of its responsibility. She still felt the Chalice was incomprehensibly beyond her – even wished that it were incomprehensibly beyond her, so she could give up.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl ‘Write me! Write me now!’ But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying ‘Wait for me! Wait for me!’ and waving my notebook in the air.