Robin McKinley Quotes & Sayings

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?'
It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him. — Robin McKinley

No, but I am working up to telling you that there is no possibility of there being done what ought to be done- — Robin McKinley

We may not like it, but we need human friends, because we have human enemies whether we will or nay. — Robin McKinley

What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system? — Robin McKinley

And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket. — Robin McKinley

If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink. — Robin McKinley

Rosie hated her curly golden hair. When she was old enough to hold minimal conversations, the itsy-bitsy-cutesycoo sort of grown-ups would pull the soft ringlets gently and tell her what a pretty little girl she was. She would stare at this sort of grown-up and say, "I am not pretty. I am intelligent. And brave." The grown-ups usually thought this was darling, which only made her angry, perhaps partly because she was speaking the truth, although it was tricky to differentiate between "brave" and "foolhardy" at three or four years old. — Robin McKinley

Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said: You do not have to choose. — Robin McKinley

So I said I'd had a headache all day (which was true) and on second thought I would go home to bed, and I was sorry. I was out the door again not five minutes after I'd gone in. Mel — Robin McKinley

I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood ...
I was raving, if only to myself. — Robin McKinley

I liked that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. — Robin McKinley

One day" she told them, "when you have retired, you will go to live with a family who will love you for your beauty and nothing more, and if you're very lucky there will be children, and the children will pet you and pet you and pet you. Ossin has a list, I think, of such children; he sends his hunting-staff out during the months they are not needed for that work, to look for them, and add names to the list." The fleethounds stared back at her with their enormous dark liquid eyes, and believed every word. — Robin McKinley

Muffin cups in my bakery were real sorcerer's apprentice material, like the dough for the cinnamon rolls every morning could have stood in for The Blob. — Robin McKinley

There are stories about "good" vampires like there are stories about the loathly lady who, after a hearty meal of raw horse and hunting hound and maybe the odd huntsman or archer, followed by an exciting night in the arms of her chosen knight turns into the kindest and most beautiful lady the world has ever seen ...
[ ... ]
And the way I see it, the horse and the hound and the huntsman are still dead, and you have to wonder about the psychology of the chosen knight who goes along with all the carnage and the fun and frolic in bed on some dubious ground of "honor. — Robin McKinley

Betrayal would be a different sort of sick. — Robin McKinley

But the uproar this caused was nothing compared with the uproar when Katronia noticed [Rosie] had also cut her eyelashes. Various negotiations (including, finally, such desperate measures as "supposing you ever want to eat again") eventually produced the grudging promise that, in return for Katronia keeping her hair cut short, she would leave her eyelashes alone. — Robin McKinley

Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.
Can I trust him?
What do I have to lose? — Robin McKinley

Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all of her life how to be stubborn. — Robin McKinley

The story is always better than your ability to write it. — Robin McKinley

So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town
the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them
and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love. — Robin McKinley

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader. — Robin McKinley

I said with perfect honest, I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no. — 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 McKinley

This place felt like home; not her home perhaps, but someone's home, accustomed to shelter and keep and befriend its master. — Robin McKinley

She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical problems and councillors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a man who had ever been able to enter into a child's games, but she might have noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it was, the awkwardness of a father's love for a daughter he doesn't know how to talk to, not shame for what Aerin was, or could or could not do. — Robin McKinley

It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered. — Robin McKinley

It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often. — Robin McKinley

We are all only mortal," said the Master, even more slowly. "We do only what we can do. All the Elemental priests have certain teachings in common: one of them is that everyone, every human, every bird, badger and salamander, every blade of grass and every acorn, is doing the best it can. This is the priests' definition of mortality: the circumstance of doing what one can is that of doing one's best. Only the immortals have the luxury of furlough. Doing one's best is hard work; we rely on our surroundings because we must; when our surroundings change, we stumble. If you are running as fast as you can, only a tiny roughness of the ground may make you fall. — Robin McKinley

It had not been a very cheerful journey, not the least for the western excursion into Outlander territory, where a stubborn and pompous old man had refused to listen to the truth; but Corlath had expected what he found and-she thought-saw no use in being discouraged. — Robin McKinley

She had had insomnia badly when she was fresh from Home ... She had had only occasional bad nights since then. Bad? she thought. Why bad? I rarely feel much the worse the next day, except for a sort of moral irritability that seems to go with the feeling that I ought to have spent all those silent hours asleep. — Robin McKinley

I disliked promises on principle because my conscience made me keep them — Robin McKinley

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. — Robin McKinley

Because she was a princess she had a pegasus. — Robin McKinley

I went to bed wearing my oldest, most faded flannel shirt, the bra that had looked all right in the catalog but was obviously an escapee from a downmarket nursing home when it arrived, white cotton panties that had had pansies on them about seven hundred washings ago and were now a kind of mottled gray, and the jeans I usually wore for housecleaning or raking Yolande's garden because they were too shabby for work even if I never came out of the bakery. Food inspector arrest-on-sight jeans. Oh, and fuzzy green plaid socks. It was a cool night for summer. Relatively. I lay down on top of the bedspread. And slept through till the alarm at three-forty-five. He hadn't come. T — Robin McKinley

I like to assume that since I drive a car and maintain a respectable credit rating and rarely murder anyone and bury them in the back garden unless they really deserve it, that the fact that I hear voices wont unduly disturb anyone. — Robin McKinley

No wonder he'd never really finished becoming one of us. We just thought it was because he was half Japanese, and lived in a huge house on the other side of town with a dad who was never home and who none of our parents had ever met. And possibly because he was an arrogant moody stuck-on-himself creepazoid And here he wasn't even a real gizmohead. He was just a grind. And a werewolf. — Robin McKinley

Stop it. This is me, remember? We've been thrown up by the same puppies. - Ossin — Robin McKinley

He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough. — Robin McKinley

The king will catch us if the sheriff should fail to and then the Saxon race can be symbolically and romantically hung by the neck till dead. — Robin McKinley

It's kind of interesting you're driving a car big enough for a wolfhound and a mastiff to get in the back of today," I said.
"And a greyhound, a dark brown bear, and a brindle utility vehicle," said Jill.
"Greyhounds don't take up much room," I said. "They're like dog silhouettes. — Robin McKinley

What was new was the fact that, despite my heart doing its fight-or-flight, help-we're-prey-and-HEY-STUPID-THAT'S-A-VAMPIRE number, I was glad to see him. Ridiculous but true. Scary but true. — Robin McKinley

Swords. That is no faenorn ; that is slaughter."
The Grand Seneschal shrugged. "The Master did not protest. And, indeed, what weapon could he have suggested that would suit him any better?"
"Fire," she said.
"He would not," said the Seneschal. "You know he would not. — Robin McKinley

They could at least part with love. It was like Tor to make the gesture; her father, for all his kindness, was too proud - or too much a king; and she was too proud, or too bitter, or too young. — Robin McKinley

... at four o'clock in the morning, when the world is full of magic, things may be safely said that may not be uttered at any other time, so long as the person who listens believes in the same kind of magic as the person who speaks. — Robin McKinley

Little John: I would come too. He might want knocking in a stream to cool his anger.
Much: I will come too, to fish him out again, and to reassure him that not all of us have this queer craving for hurling folks in water. — Robin McKinley

One of the things you need to understand is that I'm not a brave person.
I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly.
The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can produce
character references. But that's something else. I'm not brave. — Robin McKinley

First rule: If your dog doesn't do what you want, it's your fault. — Robin McKinley

There's always a nest time,' said the king, 'unfortunately. You just don't know what it's going to be about. — Robin McKinley

He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative. — Robin McKinley

Water - plain water from the Ladywell - and a spoonful of honey, Master. She was sure - she was almost sure - she did not imagine it that he smiled. And it was only after her answer that she felt him begin to draw the cup toward himself. Still he did not - or could not - bear its weight, and so she carried it for him. Together they made only a faint gesture of holding it above his head, for the audience to see; and then she tipped it gently against his mouth, and saw him drink. — Robin McKinley

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story The Book-Bag. — Robin McKinley

I loved every one of these people. And I couldn't take another minute of their company. — Robin McKinley

Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not. — Robin McKinley

It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind. It had never occurred to me that leaving someone alone could harden into a habit that could become a barrier. — Robin McKinley

I almost wish I'd had the forethought to eat a tree myself. — Robin McKinley

The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are. — Robin McKinley

But their strength is the strength of numbers and of stubbornness and persistence; do not underestimate it. — Robin McKinley

It was of grey stone, huge block set on block;but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin's back at dawn. — Robin McKinley

[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous. — Robin McKinley

She fell in love with him, and he with her; that's a spell if you like. — Robin McKinley

There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her. — Robin McKinley

Like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor? — Robin McKinley

There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving like a farmer's son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith. — Robin McKinley

Why do you tell me ... so much?"
Luthe considered her. "I tell you ... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know
" He stopped ...
"Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you. — Robin McKinley

Oh,' she said, too bone-weary to pretend: 'I would far rather that I love you as I saw yesterday I do than that I had gone on worshiping you as I did not long since.' And she turned away hastily, and did not see that Little John would reach out to her; and half-running, went to Tuck's cottage, where she could pull on her half-dry clothes, and become a proper outlaw again. At least, she thought, fighting back tears, like this I am Cecil, with a place among friends, and a task to do. I am someone. I wonder if perhaps if I am no longer Cecil, I am no one at all. — Robin McKinley

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto? — Robin McKinley

Can't all beasts be tamed? — Robin McKinley

The world turned, and new stories rose up, and the legends of the old days faltered a little, or turned themselves in their course to keep up with the lives of their people, and the lives of great-grandchildren of those they had first known. — Robin McKinley

The bus timetable sites are all run by an inbred cabal of malicious gnomes. Who don't speak English. And who don't count very well either. Or tell time. And they certainly can't read maps. — Robin McKinley

I long for another human face just as I fear it. — Robin McKinley

What was she to say? The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until next time? — Robin McKinley

Maybe I should try to be grateful at having been spared intimacy with the most dangerous of the Others. Gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'under the dark. — Robin McKinley

She laughed at him then, because he sounded like a small boy, not like a very large grown-up Beast with a voice so deep it made the hair on the back of your neck stir when you heard it. 'But vegetables are good for you,' she said, and added caressingly, 'They make you grow up big and strong.'
He smiled, showing a great many teeth. 'You see why I wish to eat no more vegetables. — Robin McKinley

I believe that the one thing that has come out of this
extraordinary
meeting this morning is an awareness that we have, perhaps, been careless about the critical relationship between human and pegasus, careless in our resignation that no better bond than what we are accustomed to can exist. The king agrees with you that his daughter and Lrrianay's son suggest a different way. But the king's view, and indeed hope, for that way is diametrically opposed to your own. Bring what the histories can tell us both, and the councils will decide whose concept of the way forward has more merit.
The king is prepared to consider the possibility that your outburst arose from a dedication to the well-being of our country too profound for restraint; but he is only barely prepared so to consider it. You may leave us. Now. — Robin McKinley

Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin's words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will's litter sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognize it for what it was. — Robin McKinley

All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired?
I sat very diligently, she said. — Robin McKinley

Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters. — Robin McKinley

I get a little cranky with the whole business about kids not having attention spans. This reminds me of the usual business of thinking that the next generation is hopeless. Every generation has said that about every younger generation. — Robin McKinley

Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole. — Robin McKinley

Evil is a kind of oblivion, having destroyed everything on its way there. I — Robin McKinley

He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all. — Robin McKinley

I'd be looking at some stony sculpture Michelangelo would have killed his grandmother to be able to do, and thinking, I don't know that color, that color doesn't exist, but like wow. — Robin McKinley

Mice are terribly chatty. They will chat about anything, and if there is nothing to chat about, they will chat about having nothing to chat about. Compared to mice, robins are reserved. — Robin McKinley

Galanna's gift, it was dryly said, was to be impossible to please. — Robin McKinley

There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance. — Robin McKinley

Cornbread?"

He brightened immediately. I was as bad as Paulie, really, despite how long I'd been doing this. Someone wants to eat my food, they're automatically my friend. Someone who doesn't want to eat my food, they automatically aren't. This is an awkward attitude if you hang out a lot with a vampire. — Robin McKinley

I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "But I do believe in ... loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents - happy or otherwise - and taking advantage of these. — Robin McKinley

Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you — Robin McKinley

HIs riders knew most of this, even if they did not see it with the dire clarity Corlath was forced to ... — Robin McKinley

I'm also old ... and my own gift for writing fantasy grows out of very literal-minded, pragmatic soil: the things I do when I'm not telling stories have always been pretty three-dimensional. I used to say that the only strong attraction reality ever had for me was horses and horseback riding, but I've also been cooking and going for long walks since I was a kid (yes, the two are related), and I'm getting even more three dimensionally biased as I get older - gardening, bell ringing ... piano playing ... And the stories I seem to need to write seem to need that kind of nourishment from me - how you feed your story telling varies from writer to writer. My story-telling faculty needs real-world fresh air and experiences that create calluses (and sometimes bruises). — Robin McKinley

And when I looked up and saw you as you were, in no gaudy robes and bearing no solemn goblet - suddenly I had hope.'
'I did not see you looking,' said Mirasol.
'I did no want you to see,' said the Master.'And I looked away quickly, because I knew the hope was false. I knew - I think I knew - that it was not really about hope, it was about looking at you. And so I looked at Horuld, and at his sword, and reminded myself that they were about to kill me. — Robin McKinley

I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting. — Robin McKinley

I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed? — Robin McKinley

She thought, I need no cup. I am Chalice. I am filling with the grief and hurt and fear of my demesne; the shattered earthlines weigh me down; I am brimming with the needs of my people. — Robin McKinley

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week. — Robin McKinley

Their new Master was coming home: the Master thought lost or irrecoverable. The Master who, as younger brother of the previous Master, had been sent off to the priests of Fire, to get rid of him. — Robin McKinley

And what was I panicking about anyway? Being left alone with myself? I'd rather have a vampire around?

Well. Yes. — Robin McKinley

Beauty: "You called me beautiful last night."
Beast: "You do not believe me then?"
Beauty: "Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise."
Beast: "You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful? — Robin McKinley

She fell asleep, leaning on his chest, and he edged her a little off a particularly painful bruise, leaned his head back against the tree he had propped them up against, and closed his own eyes. — Robin McKinley

What ... you're a hedgehog!" It stirred at her touch and then curled up tighter. "You're a very small hedgehog. And you shouldn't be wandering round enchanted palaces looking for adventures. — Robin McKinley