Patricia A. McKillip Quotes & Sayings

I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me. — Patricia A. McKillip

He exuded ambiguities she decided, that was his fascination.
His mouth spoke; his eyes said something other: his smile belied everything ...
He played with the language of the Circle of Days like a child with an arsenal of twigs ...
His music said otherwise it seemed to echo through time out of a past as old as the stones on the hill. He lied with every note he played.
Or in his music he finally told the truth. — Patricia A. McKillip

Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister. — Patricia A. McKillip

He assumed his stillness like a shield, impervious and impenetrable; she wondered if it hid a total stranger or someone as familiar as to her as his name. — Patricia A. McKillip

And then he left the palace to roam the streets of Ombria, where he painted shadows as he searched for light within them, painted thick, barred doors, as he searched in their hewn, scarred grains for what it was they hid, painted high windowless walls as if, rebuilding them stone by stone on paper, he could dismantle them and finally see the secret life behind the real. — Patricia A. McKillip

There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun. — Patricia A. McKillip

How strange to be in a dream one moment and in the world the next, and to know the difference in the blink of an eye. — Patricia A. McKillip

Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it. — Patricia A. McKillip

The moon grew full, then slowly pared itself down until it shriveled into a ghostly boat riding above the roiling dark. Then it fell out of the sky. They climbed into it, left land behind, and floated out to sea. — Patricia A. McKillip

Sorrow was like sleeping on stone,he (Brenden)decided. You had to settle all its bumps and sharp edges, come to terms against them,fit them around until they became bearable, and then carry your bed wherever you went. — Patricia A. McKillip

No song, no peace, no poetry, no end of days, and no forgetting. — Patricia A. McKillip

A librarian had found the baby sitting abandoned on the sheer edge of the world; the librarians kept her. That proved shrewd. Nepenthe had drooled on words, talked at them, and tried to eat them until she learned to take them into her eyes instead of her mouth. — Patricia A. McKillip

In that place things begin to wear away even as they are built; the living die a little more each day. The sun is too far away; light slides endlessly into night; fire and love consume themselves; the heart tries to warm itself with ashes. — Patricia A. McKillip

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places. — Patricia A. McKillip

I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you. When you opened your gates to me, I was home. — Patricia A. McKillip

The message, which one fall or another of the coin would eventually give him, was how to get himself out of his chamber and into Nepenthe's, so that he could tell her why he had not come to tell her why he had not come. — Patricia A. McKillip

There was a drop of human blood in her, and in her father ... it brought both of them visions at times, living dreams of the world beyond the wood. Her father had learned to ignore them, for they meant nothing to him. She, still learning words for her own world, did not make such distinctions: Everything was new, everything spoke to her and had a name; she had not yet learned that something could mean nothing. — Patricia A. McKillip

Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read. — Patricia A. McKillip

Peace, tremulous, unexpected, sent a taproot out of nowhere into Morgan's heart. — Patricia A. McKillip

The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales. — Patricia A. McKillip

If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can't turn back. There is now answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.
-Deth to Morgon, Prince of Hed- — Patricia A. McKillip

Do you become in visible?'
'No. I'm there, if you know how to look. I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be. — Patricia A. McKillip

The tutor's eyelids drooped; his thoughts drained out of his face like water seeping into earth. — Patricia A. McKillip

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. — Patricia A. McKillip

Morgan," he whispered, "I wish you had not been someone I loved so. — Patricia A. McKillip

He could think no longer; he leaned against his shadow. The silence within the slab of ancient stone eased through him; his thoughts, worn meaningless, became quiet again. — Patricia A. McKillip

Men see what they are most afraid of. — Patricia A. McKillip

Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art. — Patricia A. McKillip

I don't teach lies, but I do not teach all I know is true. — Patricia A. McKillip

You were crying. It's a terrible thing, loving the sea."
"Yes," she whispered, her eyes straying to it. Waves gathered and broke invisibly in the dark, reaching toward her, pulling back. They were never silent, they never spoke. — Patricia A. McKillip

Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination. — Patricia A. McKillip

She didn't bother taking off her snow-crusted cloak; she came to us quickly, dripping and shivering, her eyes luminous and strained from trying to see beyond the world. — Patricia A. McKillip

It was no warning, no judgment, simply her name, and she could have wept at the recognition of it. — Patricia A. McKillip

He could pick my heart like a rose and watch it wither in his hand. Sometimes I think he is like that. At other times I think he is as simple and golden and generous as our father's fields. And then I see things in his eyes - things that I have never looked at, and I know that I have walked a short and easy road out of my past, while he has walked a thousand roads to meet me. I know Perrin's past; the same road runs into his future. I don't know Corbet. — Patricia A. McKillip

But you must stop playing among his ghosts
it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair. — Patricia A. McKillip

I had thirty-nine typed pages and a contract stating I would send the completed manuscript in by February 1, 2002. I knew where I wanted the novel to go, but I couldn't seem to shove it past page 39. I couldn't find the point of view I needed to examine the life and motives of a man who wanted to conquer the world. I did the usual: sacrificed small rodents to the moon, offered my soul to demons in exchange for inspiration, did some research. Nobody wanted the rodents or my soul, and the research into ancient conquerors seemed barren. Finally, out of the blue, a young girl stepped into my head, opened her mouth and told me where that part of the story began. — Patricia A. McKillip

Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.'
'Be thankful,' Gavin advised with a laugh, 'that so far the music is still being played and everyone is trying to dance in harmony. — Patricia A. McKillip

Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears. — Patricia A. McKillip

Kir stood close to his father, watching. He seemed, Peri realized, finally becalmed; already he looked more like his mother, as if he were relinquishing his human experience. He found her looking at him wistfully; he gave her a sea-smile. She swallowed a briny taste of sadness in her throat. Already he was leaving her. — Patricia A. McKillip

Above us hung a tapestry of silver and gold and palest green that in my world had faded into white: a great oak so entwined with ivy it had died, its bare branches pushing through the leaves like bone. I stared at the roses, wanting to hold my hands to such red, but like the light, they burned cold. — Patricia A. McKillip

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all. — Patricia A. McKillip

He had no place in the world, he said once, therefore he could go everywhere. — Patricia A. McKillip

That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it. — Patricia A. McKillip

The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there — Patricia A. McKillip

The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there. -Cyrin — Patricia A. McKillip

[Imagination] must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grow larger and noisier. — Patricia A. McKillip

I think they could teach us unimaginable things.
Unimaginable! I can't imagine anything except danger.
I know. That's why they're afraid of you. — Patricia A. McKillip

That man would betray his own shadow. And for what? A child's tale.'
'Is it?' Mag looked at her. 'Is it only a tale?'
For a moment, the purple eyes grew dark, black as the little rags of shadows that Mag saw on empty streets or patches of barren ground, attached to nothing, seemingly blown at random from some place adrift in light. — Patricia A. McKillip

That once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone. — Patricia A. McKillip

What do you think love is- a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you choose into your darkness, but you will see me always beneath you, no matter how far away, with my face turned to you. My heart is in your heart. I gave it to you with my name that night and you are its guardian, to treasure it, or let it whither and die. I do not understand you. I am angry with you. I am hurt and helpless, but nothing will fill the ache of the hollowness in me where your name would echo if I lost you. — Patricia A. McKillip

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored. — Patricia A. McKillip

The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said. Now. Then: Patience, patience. 'You are flowers,' their mouths said, 'You are jewels, you are golden dreams.' Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart, and I will keep you there ... — Patricia A. McKillip

Something - a flick of color, the faint beat of the earth under my feet, or maybe my name in someone's thoughts - made me lift my eyes. — Patricia A. McKillip

She had begun to bake to have her eyes looking at a bowl, a flour bin, an oven, a fire, a face, anything but water. Her hands shaped loaves like scallop shells, like moon shells, like starfish; she ate them as if she ate the sea, to make it part of her, to transform bone to shell and lose herself in it, eyeless, thoughtless, wrapped in memories and anchored on some hoary rock against the currents of the deep. — Patricia A. McKillip

You can weave your life so long
only so long, and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued. — Patricia A. McKillip

Oh, yes." He felt the pearls brush down his face again. Dory turned: he met her eyes and let her see the new pearls forming. "Anything that beautiful is terrible. Because it's outside of you. It's not you. You'll do anything to make it part of you. You'd eat it, drown in it, kill it, let it kill you. Anything to stop it from not being you. — Patricia A. McKillip

But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language. — Patricia A. McKillip

Then you will have to trust me. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope, trust me. — Patricia A. McKillip

This palace,' he had said, 'is a small city, past lying close to present like one shoe next to another. If you look at them in a mirror, left becomes right, present becomes past ... — Patricia A. McKillip

I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man's voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally; sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I returned them to my joy." Morgon — Patricia A. McKillip

She smiled. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes, too. Then you touch my face with your scarred hand and read my mind. Your eyes know me. That's why I keep following you all over the realm, barefoot or half-frozen, cursing the sun or the wind, or myself because I have no more sense than to love a man who does not even possess a bed I can crawl into at night. And sometimes I curse you because you have spoken my name in a way that no other man in the realm will speak it, and I will listen for that until I die. So," she added, as he gazed down at her mutely, "how can I leave you?" He — Patricia A. McKillip

When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing ... there is no room in you for fear. — Patricia A. McKillip

She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owl's eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves. — Patricia A. McKillip

All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles. — Patricia A. McKillip

Every moment is like a wheel with a hundred spokes in it. We ride always at the hub of the wheel and go forward as it turns. We ignore the array of other moments constantly turning around us. We are surrounded by doorways; we never open them. — Patricia A. McKillip

He finally took his harp out of the cobwebs, walked out the door, and admitted who he was: the Unforgiven. — Patricia A. McKillip

It's so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can't see beyond yourself. — Patricia A. McKillip

Shall I add a man to my collection? — Patricia A. McKillip

Branches grew from his hands, his hair. His thoughts tangled like roots in the ground. He strained upward. Pitch ran like tears down his back. His name formed his core; ring upon ring of silence built around it. His face rose high above the forests. Gripped to earth, bending to the wind's fury, he disappeared within himself, behind the hard, wind-scrolled shield of his experiences. — Patricia A. McKillip

What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't let us see them, why she clings to them
or they cling to her
as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she can't get out and we can't get in to free her. — Patricia A. McKillip

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice. — Patricia A. McKillip

What? It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow. — Patricia A. McKillip

I would be mute, beautiful, changless as the earth for you. I would be your memory, without age, always innocent, always waiting in the King's white house. I would do that for you and no other man inthe relm. But it would be a lie and I will do anything but lie to you - I swear that. — Patricia A. McKillip

You have a very peculiar expression on your face,' he commented drowsily.
'I was just thinking.'
'About what?'
'About how we know what's real. How we wake out of a timeless place and recognize time. How you know me here, now, even when nothing or anyone else in this place is familiar. I might have been wandering through your dream, but you knew immediately which of me will bring you paper.'
He was silent for so long, still clasping her wrist, that she thought he must have fallen asleep without knowing it. He said finally, 'Say that again.'
'I can't,' she answered helplessly. 'It was just a thought. I gave it to you.'
'Something about dreams coming to life--'
'That's not what I said. — Patricia A. McKillip

Even I could not guess what misgivings lay behind Perrin's clear eyes. Perhaps none; perhaps he trusted Laurel without question. Perhaps he was right. All I knew is what Laurel's hands said when she spoke Corbet's name. And how often she said it, until it seemed, like the falling of autumn leaves, or the long ribbons of migrating birds, one of the season's changes. — Patricia A. McKillip

His face, at once beautiful and feral, revealed no more than the lion's face, which says nothing at all as the lion crouches and waits. It speaks only when it springs. — Patricia A. McKillip

Do you want a half-truth or truth?" "Truth." "Then you will have to trust me." His voice was suddenly softer than the fire sounds, melting into the silence within the stones. "Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. Trust me." Morgon — Patricia A. McKillip

There are no simple words. I don't know why I thought I could hide anything behind language. — Patricia A. McKillip

He closed his grade book and asked hopefully, "What inspired you? Was it Hawthorne?"
I stared at him. He had to be kidding. — Patricia A. McKillip

When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire completely. When he tried to step across it, he felt nothing beneath his foot. Sometimes he heard rain, a bird-cry, wind soughing through tall trees; mostly he was aware only of an intimation of vastness, silence, as though he stood at the edge of a world.
He saw nothing. So he let the charcoal imagine what might lie on the other side of the door. — Patricia A. McKillip

Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind. — Patricia A. McKillip

She [Kane] and Axis performed the ancient ritual of flinging their toys at one another's heads, and in that moment recognized a common destiny. They became inseparable. — Patricia A. McKillip

Explain to me again," he begged," why we are here."

She had told him once before; it had been like listening to a vivid, improbable dream. — Patricia A. McKillip

As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels. — Patricia A. McKillip

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet. — Patricia A. McKillip

He went into a dark tower of truth for you. Do you have the courage to give him your own name? — Patricia A. McKillip

He is not here to help me with this; you must take his place.'
Ducon started to speak, faltered. He stared at her, the bruise on his face suddenly vivid against his pallor, as if she had struck him. — Patricia A. McKillip

Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born.
Here I am no longer my own secret.
Will you let me stay? — Patricia A. McKillip

The Shadow of the Emperor
The Hooded One
Who unmasked night
Who laid the stars like paving stones
Who rode the Thunderbolt
Down the star-cobbled path into day
Was Kane,
The Emperor's twin
Silent, as lightning is silent,
Before the thunder speaks. — Patricia A. McKillip

But dear, you hate to sew.
I will be married soon. Lady Thiel says a woman with needlework in her hands is generally assumed to have no other thoughts in her head and can safely harbor any number of improprieties. That will come in handy, especially when I'm married to a wizard. — Patricia A. McKillip

It's an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles. — Patricia A. McKillip

Sorry, he said penitently. It's a book. I have no common sense around them. — Patricia A. McKillip

Lydea found Mag's knowledge astonishing, and had gotten into the habit of taking lessons with the prince. They helped each other study, sometimes with the aid of puppets. — Patricia A. McKillip

Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombria's past. Parts of the city's past lay within time's reach, beneath the streets in great old limestone tunnels: the hovels and mansions and sunken river that Ombria shrugged off like a forgotten skin, and buried beneath itself through the centuries. — Patricia A. McKillip

I thought that all magic has its price.'
'Magic does,' Faey said. 'But let us consider this an exchange of knowledge. I'll tell you what you want to know and you'll tell me why you want to know it. — Patricia A. McKillip

She spread her hands. That morning they had been soft as feathers, jeweled, polished, and perfumed. Now they were crisscrossed with blood and dirt, wearing only bruises for jewels — Patricia A. McKillip

If you speak of this I will tear out your voice and top it down the nearest drain — Patricia A. McKillip

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that. — Patricia A. McKillip