Cressida Cowell Quotes & Sayings

Happy and giggly and bustly, the Hogfly ignored Hiccup's strangled cries of: "Hoglfy! Come back here, Hogfly!"
"Ooh!" it squeaked in delighted confusion. "You all look so lovely! How am I to choose which one of you to be my friend?"
It perched on the sinister swoop of the Razorwing's nose.
"Where's my biscuit? Are you married? Be my valentine ... "
"I can't bear to watch ... " groaned Fishlegs.
It was like seeing an enthusiastic bunny rabbit trying to make friends with a heavily armed, bunny-eating cobra. — Cressida Cowell

Well, suffering swordfish," exclaimed Fishlegs. "Hiccup is LEFTHANDED. — Cressida Cowell

There were dragons when I was a boy. — Cressida Cowell

The first Dragon was enough to give you nightmares.
The second Dragon was enough to give your nightmares nightmares. — Cressida Cowell

"MAKE RED YOUR CLAWS WITH HUMAN BLOOD ... OBLITERATE THE HUMAN FILTH ... "
"Ooh, that's a nice song," said the Hogfly, ever polite. — Cressida Cowell

Always sailing, sailing, sailing ... never quite reaching. — Cressida Cowell

Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters. — Cressida Cowell

Because: Love Never Dies, What is Within is More Important than What is Without, The Best is Not Always the Most Obvious and Once You've Loved Truly, Thor, then You Know the Way — Cressida Cowell

I forget myself sometimes, but then I look up, as I am looking up now, and I see in my mind's eye a sheild, strangely changed by a rich encrusting of jewel-like barnacles and cold-water coral, with an eight foot tooth sticking right out of the middle of it. I reach out and the edge of that tooth is still so bitingly sharp after all these years that just a gentle brush with the fingers might send a rain of blood down on these pages. And I bend my head, not too close, and I am sure I can hear, very faintly:
Once I set the sea alight
With a single fiery breath ...
Once I was so mighty that I thought
My name was Death ...
Sing out loud until you're eaten,
Song of melancholy blisss,
For the mighty and the middling
All shall come to THIS ...
The Supper is still singing. — Cressida Cowell

I have never cared for Castles
or a Crown that grips too tight,
Let the night sky be my starry roof
and the moon my only light,
My Heart was born a Hero,
my storm-bound sword won't rest,
I left the Harbour long ago
on a Never-ending Quest,
I am off to the horizon,
where the wild wind blows the foam,
Come get lost with me, love,
and the sea shall be our home! — Cressida Cowell

Please do not blame the story.
The story cannot help itself. We do not realize it at the time, but sometimes the story we are all a part of is not just a story about Vikings and islands and dragons.
It is a story about growing up.
And one of the things about growing up, one of the inescapable, inevitable laws, is that one day...
One day... one day...
It is going to happen.
I am sorry, but it's true. — Cressida Cowell

The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit. So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong? — Cressida Cowell

Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak.
Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand. — Cressida Cowell

We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time. — Cressida Cowell

But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages. — Cressida Cowell

K-k-keep your helmet on. T-t-toothless doing his BEST. — Cressida Cowell

GO FOR HIS EYES! OR BITE HIM ON THE NOSE! DRAGON NOSES ARE VERY SENSITIVE!
Oh, very helpful, Camicazi, very helpful ... thought Hiccup. What if he doesn't obligingly hold me up to his nose? What if the only part I get close to is the TEETH? — Cressida Cowell

The past haunts the present in more ways than we think. It certainly scares the living daylights out of ME"~ Old Wrinkly — Cressida Cowell

The Hero cares not for a wild winter's storm. For it carries him swift on the back of the storm. All may be lost and our hearts may be worn, but a Hero fights forever. — Cressida Cowell

Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that Grimbeard the Ghastly, on the deck of his ship The Endless Journey, threw the sword Endeavor up into the air. Up and up it spun, through the inky blackness, across the cavernous span of a hundred years, until, entirely of its own accord, my own left hand sprang out of space and stars and never-ending time and caught it. Now that I am so very old, I am dreaming once again. And in my dream, I am the one throwing the sword. It is spinning now, in the black starlit waters of my dream, right above your head, dear reader. A sword that may look second-best, and secondhand, but but carries the memories of a thousand lost fights, a history lesson in itself. Reach out, and catch it by the hilt. Swear by its name, Endeavor, to do your utmost to make the world a better place than when you arrived in it. For look! There will be dragons all around you, as camouflaged as a Stealth Dragon. — Cressida Cowell

Most of us are lucky not to be Kings and Heroes, because we do not have to make the choices that Kings and Heroes have to make. — Cressida Cowell

Hiccup followed him carefully ... and fell over again.
"BRAVO!" clapped Alvin, to Hiccup's surprise.
"But I fell over again" said Hiccup.
"But with such STYLE," said Alvin. "You can't teach that, it's in the blood. — Cressida Cowell

Being frightened is not the same as being a coward. — Cressida Cowell

And now that its ruby eyes are set into the gold, you cannot see their tear-shape, so they seem to be laughing rather than crying. It is a constant reminder to me of the human ability to create something beautiful even when things are at the darkest. — Cressida Cowell

However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords ... I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams.
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together ... and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood. — Cressida Cowell

Thank you for nothing, you stupid reptile. — Cressida Cowell

History is a ghost story. My own childhood has passed into history, and the ghosts I find there are the ghosts of Heroes and dragons and Berserks and witches, and it has become fashionable not to believe in these things anymore. But I believe, for I was there. — Cressida Cowell

I was not the sort of boy who could train a dragon with a mere lifting of an eyebrow. I was not a natural at the Heroism business. I had to work at it. This is the story of becoming a Hero the Hard Way. — Cressida Cowell

Courage what is within is more important than what is without. — Cressida Cowell

He says he comes in peace," said Hiccup "He's still going to kill us, though. — Cressida Cowell

Are you the stuff that hero's are made of? Or are you a jellyfish in a skirt? — Cressida Cowell

He looked as frightened as I was. I looked at him, and I saw myself.1,080 rount — Cressida Cowell

Oh, for Thor's sake ... " said Hiccup. "I thought that was just a story ... "
"Stories come from somewhere," said the witch. "The past haunts the present in more ways than we realise. — Cressida Cowell

But Tact and Sensitivity were not Gobber's strong points, and he took the first five minutes to come up with "Hiccup copped it. SORRY," and the spent the second five minutes tearing his beard out. — Cressida Cowell

Come on, Fishlegs," whispered Camicazi, whistling happily. "You know we have to do this. Besides, I feel like a bit of exercise. We've been cooped up in that hideout for way too long."
Frankly, at this point, Camicazi had grown so fed up that if Hiccup had suggested hang gliding off the toe-talons of the dragon Furious she'd have been up for it.
"A bit of exercise?" blustered Fishlegs. "A bit of exercise? This is not some kind of Viking version of Girls Keep Fit! — Cressida Cowell

I NAME THIS LAND TOMORROW, FOR IT SHALL LAST FOREVERMORE! — Cressida Cowell

Does this look like a dragon who would poo in a helmet??? — Cressida Cowell

But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole. — Cressida Cowell

The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today. — Cressida Cowell

WARNING
Any Relationship to any historical fact WHATSOEVER is entirely coincidental. You have been WARNED — Cressida Cowell

February turned into March and Hiccup was still thinking. A few flowers made the mistake of appearing and were immediately blasted out of existence by a couple of hard frosts that had kept themselves back for this very purpose. — Cressida Cowell

OUTCASTS! R-R-RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, YOU S-S-SSTUPID H-H-HUMANS!!! — Cressida Cowell

And this was the surprising thing about life on Berk. It was a bit like the sea itself. One minute it was all storms, and shipwrecks, and desperate escapes from deadly dragons, the next it was as calm, and peacefully restful, as if these things had never happened. — Cressida Cowell

There's no such thing as im-POSSIBLE, Hiccup, only im-PROBABLE. The only thing that limits us are the limits to our imagination — Cressida Cowell

The only GOOD Roman is a DEAD Roman," said Camicazi.
Hiccup sighed. "That isn't true. I'm sure there are LOADS of good Romans. But all the good Romans are probably quietly minding their own business back in Rome. — Cressida Cowell

CHAPTER THE FIRST
(AND LAST)
The Golden Rule of Dragon Training is to ...
YELL AT IT!
(The louder the better,)
THE END. — Cressida Cowell

Wartihog put up his hand. "What happens if we can't read, sir?"
"No boasting, Wartihog!" boomed Gobber. "Get some idiot to read it for you. — Cressida Cowell

Books were despised by the Viking Tribes, as they were seen as a horrible civilizing influence and a threat to the barbarian culture. — Cressida Cowell

Toothless crossed his eyes and made a gulping noise with his throat as if he was swallowing ...
"AAAAAAARGH!" screamed Hiccup.
Toothless spat Ziggerastica onto the floor.
"Only j-j-joking," he said. — Cressida Cowell

My poison is creeping through his body.
My strong venom is killing his heart. — Cressida Cowell

I wanted to be a King who would found a New World, not in some misty country far across the seas, but right here, right now, at home. — Cressida Cowell

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt. — Cressida Cowell

You can't put': Hiccup in charge, sir, he's USELESS. — Cressida Cowell

I didn't mean to come here ...
And I didn't mean to stay ...
It's just where the sea wind blew me
One accidental day ... — Cressida Cowell

That is a terrible plan." "Hiccup's plans are always t-terrible." "Hey! You're still here, aren't you? — Cressida Cowell

A Chief must show no fear, no worry ... A Chief is a leader first, and a man second ... — Cressida Cowell

The mighty bosoms of Big-Boobied Bertha had killed many a Warrior in mortal combat. — Cressida Cowell

Twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death — Cressida Cowell

What you g-g-gonna do, tough guy? Tickle Toothless to d-d-death? — Cressida Cowell

Remember, there is nothing wrong with a healthy sense of self-respect. — Cressida Cowell

I was not a natural ... This is the story of becoming ... the Hard Way. — Cressida Cowell

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic ... — Cressida Cowell

For a Hero cannot triumph all the time. Sometimes he will be defeated, and how he faces that defeat is a test of his character. — Cressida Cowell

History is a set of repeating circles, like the tide. The wind does blow through the ruins of tomorrow. But it is more a question of two steps forward, one step back. Humans and dragons make the same mistakes, again and again, but things do get better over time — Cressida Cowell