Philip Reeve Quotes & Sayings

He cut through the 21st Century Gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal headed gods of lost America — Philip Reeve

It would be best to stride in with a cheer "hello!", but she wasn't the cheery sort; she was the "lurking in dark corners" sort. She found a dark corner, behind the Stalker-cases, and lurked. — Philip Reeve

That's what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation. — Philip Reeve

But boys will be boys, even the ones who are only girls dressed up: That's one of the rules of the world. — Philip Reeve

I thought you'd say it might be a trap.'
'It might be trap,' he said.
'It doesn't feel like a trap.'
'Well it wouldn't, would it? Not if it was a good trap. — Philip Reeve

I have had it with these dumb cakes on this dumb spaceship! — Philip Reeve

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book. — Philip Reeve

I'm already a monster!" she shrieked.
"No, you're not!" Tom managed to heave himself to his knees. "You're my friend!" he shouted. — Philip Reeve

If God could do things like that, the world wouldn't look the way it does. He can't reach down and change things. He can't stop any of us doing what we choose to do.'

"What use is he then?"

Oenone shrugged. 'He sees. He understands. He knows how you're feeling. He knows how Theo felt. He knows how it feels to die. And when we die, we go to him.'

'To the Sunless Country, you mean? Like ghosts?"'

Oenone shook her head patiently. 'Like children. Do you remember what it was like to be a tiny child? When everything was possible and everything was given to you, and you knew that you were safe and loved, and the days went on forever? When we die, it will be like that again. That's how it is for Theo now, in heaven. — Philip Reeve

Friends don't leave friends behind to wash dishes for yetis! — Philip Reeve

I don't think we are cut out to be evil sorcerers, brothers," said Fentongoose. "If we were truly evil, we would not feel such sorrow at the deaths of our friends. We would just go, 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' or something. — Philip Reeve

Nova shrugged, looking as if she had personally invented shrugging and hadn't quite sorted out the fine details yet. — Philip Reeve

Moving cities are a fairly hoary old sci-fi trope - I seem to recall they were always cropping up on 'Doctor Who' when I was young, though I may be misremembering. — Philip Reeve

Outside, Melliphant's ear flattened itself against the wood of the door like a pale slug. — Philip Reeve

I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best-known books, the 'Mortal Engines' series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future. — Philip Reeve

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea. — Philip Reeve

But the look on his face was so strange that I hadn't the heart to take his story away from him. He believed it, see. He believed the old gods were on Arthur's side just as he believed that winter would follow autumn and the sun would rise tomorrow. And I thought that maybe that believing would make him strong and brave and lucky when the fighting came, and maybe without it he'd be killed, or turn and run away, which was worse than being killed. So I kept quiet. — Philip Reeve

High on its flanks is a complex of caves where the kings and heroes of the Mountain Kingdoms have been laid to rest, their bodies preserved by the sub-zero temperatures and thin, high-altitude air. — Philip Reeve

And isn't that what all boys want and all men, too? Just to be taken seriously? — Philip Reeve

The old curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of. — Philip Reeve

You can't keep children in the nursery forever. If you do, they never become grown-ups, but they're not really children either. They are just pets. — Philip Reeve

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it. — Philip Reeve

They're Hive Monks,' said Nova. — Philip Reeve

The one thing worse than an enemy is a friend turned false. — Philip Reeve

Fever jumped aside just in time to dodge the shower of urine, and stumbled into the path of a religious procession - celebrants in robes and pointed hats whirling and clapping and chanting the name of some old-world prophet, 'Hari, Hari! Hari Potter!' — Philip Reeve

I was fascinated by 'The Lord of the Rings' from about the age of eight, and that lasted well into my teens. — Philip Reeve

Personally, he much preferred to get them chatting. People were generally much less inclined to want to kill you once you'd chatted for a bit, and if they weren't, well, at least you could use the time to think of an escape plan. — Philip Reeve

My name," the boy said importantly, "is Stacey de Lacey."
"But that's a girl's name!" blurted Oliver.
Stacey de Lacey's face turned a dark shade of red. "Silence!" he shouted. "Stacey is one of those names that can be for a boy or a girl! Like Hilary, or Leslie, or...um... Anyway...! — Philip Reeve

He said his name was Kobi Chen-Tulsi. He said, "Tell Threnody Noon that the Prells are going to attack Grand Central." - The Crystal Horizon — Philip Reeve

Oenone had found the chapel by accident, and was not certain what kept drawing her back to it. She was not a Christian. Few people were anymore, except in Africa, and on certain islands of the outermost west. All she knew of Christians was that they worhsipped a god nailed to a cross, and what on earth was the use of a god who went around letting himself get nailed to things? — Philip Reeve

Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night. — Philip Reeve

I felt a little like saying 'Eeeeeeeeek!' myself, but seeing Myrtle so afraid reminded me that I was British, and must be brave. — Philip Reeve

She wanted to stop, but she was riding a wave of memory and it was carrying her backward to that night, that room, and the blood that had spattered her mother's star charts like the map of a new constellation. — Philip Reeve

The trouble with space is, there's so much of it.
An ocean of blackness without any shore.
A neverending nothing.
And here, all alone in the million billion miles of midnight, is one solitary moving speck. A fragile parcel filled with sleeping people and their dreams. — Philip Reeve

Uncle knows best.
-All the Lost Boys — Philip Reeve

That's impossible,' said Fever, Engineerishly. — Philip Reeve

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story. — Philip Reeve

Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don't. — Philip Reeve

I had no idea I'd end up writing four books when I completed 'Mortal Engines.' I didn't even think it would find a publisher. — Philip Reeve

The Jenny Haniver was repaired. He put his hand flat on the chart table and let the steady throb of Anchorage's engines beat against his palm, and it felt like home. In a cheap hotel behind Wolverinehampton's air-quay Widgery Blinkoe's five wives turned five — Philip Reeve

What Caul liked most about Tom was his kindness. Kindness was not valued back in Grimsby, where the older boys were encouraged to torment the younger ones, who would grow up to torment another batch of youngsters in their turn. "Good practice for life," Uncle said. "Hard knocks, that's all the world's about!" But maybe Uncle had never met anyone like Tom, who was kind to other people and seemed to expect nothing more than kindness in return. — Philip Reeve

I hate you! I hate you!" Hester was yelling
"Well I care about you, whether you like it or not!" Tom screamed. — Philip Reeve

Then, beaming at Tom and Caul, he topped up their glasses with more wine to wash down the pack of half-truths and outright lies he'd fed them — Philip Reeve

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977, the bow-wave of publicity for the first 'Star Wars' movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional. — Philip Reeve

In the old days, I'd never given a thought to the future, and not much to the past. I'd lived simply in the now. I'd been happy if I had enough to eat, and nobody was hitting me. I'd been miserable when I was cold and frightened when I was ill, but mostly I gave no more thought than an animal did to what might happen tomorrow, or next week. Just an animal walking about on two legs, that's all I was till Myrddin changed me. It seemd to me sometimes I'd been happier that way. — Philip Reeve

The Scriven men wore stack-heeled boots and pearl-studded evening coats; the ladies in their vast skirts looked like mythical creatures, half woman, half sofa. — Philip Reeve

I've just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, 'Here Lies Arthur,' and I'm currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera 'Larklight.' — Philip Reeve

Nobody wants trouble,' said Chandni. 'Trouble just find us. — Philip Reeve

Is it ... dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.
"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well ... — Philip Reeve

It will be all right, Tom. Wherever we go now, whatever becomes of us, we'll be together, and it will all be all right. — Philip Reeve

We must find you a new boyfriend, Wavey had kept telling her, but what if a girlfriend was what Fever needed? She felt as if she had opened the door to a room she had never noticed in a house where she'd lived all her life. — Philip Reeve

Uncle knows best. — Philip Reeve

All it wants is to explode.'
'Nice to have an ambition in life, I suppose. — Philip Reeve

And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake. — Philip Reeve

The small lives of women don't make for good stories. That's why there were no girls in the stories Myrddin told, unless they were there as a prize for the hero to win at the end of his adventures. — Philip Reeve

ran on blindly into the blind dark. — Philip Reeve

Its a town eat town world — Philip Reeve

An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up! — Philip Reeve

I am Nom-O-Tron,' said the machine, in a big, boomy voice, so loud that Astra was afraid her mum and dad or some other grown-ups would hear and come to see who was sneaking a bedtime snack. 'Shhh!' she said. 'Have you got any biscuits? — Philip Reeve

Boo-Boo Pennyroyal did not like her male and female slaves to mingle. In the operas that she adored, young people brought together in tragic circumstances were forever falling in love with each other and then throwing themselves off things (cliffs, mostly, but sometimes battlements, or rooftops, or the brinks of volcanoes). Boo-Boo was fond of her slaves, and it pained her to think of them plummeting in pairs off the edges of Cloud 9, so she nipped all tragic love affairs firmly in the bud by forbidding the girls and boys to speak to one another. Of course, young people being what they were, girls sometimes fell in love with other girls, or boys with boys, but that never happened in the operas, so Boo-Boo didn't notice. — Philip Reeve

I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story. — Philip Reeve

If only Myrtle would pay attention to the Boy's Own Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, etc., she would know that these creatures were Threls, who come from a worldlet called Threlfall on the far side of the asteroid belt. This Threlfall is a cheerless, chilly spot, and the whole history and religion of the Threls has been concerened with their quest to knit a nice woolly coverlet for it. — Philip Reeve

My first encounter with science fiction was reading the work of H.G. Wells when I was nine or ten, and I don't believe 'The War of the Worlds' or 'The Time Machine' have ever been bettered. Plus, I have always had a liking for Victorian and Edwardian clothes and contraptions, which tends to color the worlds I dream up. — Philip Reeve

I don't travel much; I just stay at home and imagine weird places. — Philip Reeve

You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right. — Philip Reeve

The closest she had been to them was certain summer evenings when they had gone for picnics in the magravine's ice-barge -- simple family affairs, just Freya and Mama and Papa and about seventy servants and courtiers — Philip Reeve

They're only stories," he would say, "What do stories matter?" But he wasn't stupid. He knew as well as Myrddin that in the end stories are all that matter. — Philip Reeve

I am forever being captured these days. It isn't like me at all. You must think me such a silly princess. — Philip Reeve

You know, sometimes a thing, a system, a creation grows so old, and corrupt, and weighed down by its own baggage, that all you can do is change it. Move on. Start afresh. It's frightening, but it has to be done. — Philip Reeve

These are new worlds, Zen. We don't have to be what we were any more. We can be anything that we want. We can be humans together. - Nova — Philip Reeve

He was going to miss everything. But he guessed that was how everybody always felt. Everyone was losing things, leaving things behind, clinging to old memories as they rushed into the future. Everyone was a passenger on a runaway train. — Philip Reeve

Everyone was losing things, leaving things behind, clinging to old memories as they rushed into the future. Everyone was a passenger on a runaway train. It was true that Zen would be going farther than most. But at least he didn't — Philip Reeve