Top 140 Garth Nix Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Unhand my tail!” squealed the Will.”

— Garth Nix

102. “Some were Charter Mages, and there would not be time to argue rights and wrongs, so any aggressive magic he used would be countered or negated by these others, as was the nature of Charter Magic.”

— Garth Nix

103. “There was John Masefield’s The Box of Delights; and the C. S. Lewis Narnia books; and Patricia Lynch’s The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey; The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker; Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken; several of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, including Susan’s favorite, The Silver Branch; Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones; The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner; Five Children and It by E. Nesbit; and many others.”

— Garth Nix

104. “I don’t particularly want to meet anyone. I’m quite happy by myself. Or at least, I was, back home.”

— Garth Nix

105. “Fine!” muttered Mogget. “Wet, cold, and full of holes. Another fun day on the river.”

— Garth Nix

106. “This is what it is, to be an Abhorsen.”

— Garth Nix

107. “Bravery is about overcoming fear, not about not having it.”

— Garth Nix

108. “They passed it late in the afternoon, their single sail stretched to bursting, clinker-built hull heeling well over, bow slicing up a column of spray that salted mouths, eyes and bodies.”

— Garth Nix

109. “I ‘ad a toy when I was little,’ said Suzy. She frowned for a moment, then added, ‘Can’t remember what it was. It moved and made me laugh...”

— Garth Nix

110. “What Great Beast will have their solitude pierced by your grasping little voices?”

— Garth Nix

111. “I feel that you will be a maker, not a seer. You must promise me that it will be so. Promise me that you will not give in. Promise me that you will never give up hope.”

— Garth Nix

112. “I don’t have a lot of valuables on me at the moment though... and I need the ones I have for my Quest. Could you perhaps agree to rob me later? – Anya.”

— Garth Nix

113. “Going through the arch, from mud into snow, from bright sun into the pallid luminescence of a snowfall, from her past into her future.”

— Garth Nix

114. “The hour we spent sneaking through the temple, with Haddad circumventing various monitors, dodging guards, and then boarding the ship through a supposedly one-way waste umbilical, was very educational. At least after I got cleaned up I appreciated the educational aspects.”

— Garth Nix

115. “A young woman who until the very end chose neither wisely or well.”

— Garth Nix

116. “Wake me when whatever terrible thing is about to happen happens, or if it appears I might get wet.”

— Garth Nix

117. “I love you too, but my time with you has passed.”

— Garth Nix

118. “In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened, Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it – the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.”

— Garth Nix

119. “Millennia of servitude, Abhorsen. Chained by trickery, treachery... captivenin a repulsive, fixed-flesh shape... but there will be payment, slow payment – not quick, not quick at all!”

— Garth Nix

120. “Pause friend, be smelled and enter!“...”

— Garth Nix

121. “A breath?” she asked. She didn’t want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed very forward. He might remember it, and make assumptions.”

— Garth Nix

122. “Lirael left in a daze of happiness. She had survived the ordeal. She had been accepted. She was going to be a librarian!”

— Garth Nix

123. “Be a writer, if you will Or don’t, no one will care Order your shelves, or not Kill or kiss your darlings Simply write.”

— Garth Nix

124. “Everything is always better for a walk.”

— Garth Nix

125. “It is never the dogs who break faith.”

— Garth Nix

126. “We’re really going to ride rhinos?” asked Conor excitedly.”

— Garth Nix

127. “You mortals arose from the possibility she made and, though she always liked to think so, are consequently not of her direct design.”

— Garth Nix

128. “The hemispheres had been separated by a strange barrier made of seven different materials, including bone.”

— Garth Nix

129. “She fought back the tears in her eyes, because though she no longer felt she was one of the Clayr, she still felt she was a librarian and always would be, no matter what else she had become as well.”

— Garth Nix

130. “I think Merlin has explained to you that the mythic landscape is layered, and usually quite local. Entities and environments are generally confined to a particular geographic area and often also to particular times of day or night, phases of the moon, that sort of thing. Even weather, as with the things that come out after rain, or only when it snows. And they are bound by custom and lore to behave in certain ways, to do certain things, and of course these days are mostly dormant anyway.”

— Garth Nix

131. “Knowledge is always useful, even if... if it is not immediately apparent how it will be useful.”

— Garth Nix

132. “In general, one cannot go back. But in going forward, you may achieve some of what you desired of the past. If you can survive, anything may happen. – The Old One.”

— Garth Nix

133. “Midnight Visitors,’ whispered Suzy fearfully. ‘With nightmare-whips and night-gloves.”

— Garth Nix

134. “Very few people ever met a necromancer, but anyone who did remembered the bells.”

— Garth Nix

135. “Conor had volunteered to carry it, perhaps hoping it would make the others think better of him. Rollan.”

— Garth Nix

136. “Books help us anchor our souls, or re-anchor them; particularly for us, the left-handed, given the things we have to do.”

— Garth Nix

137. “When the cat finished, she looked up at the red-washed sky above and the glittering stars beyond the Wall and a single tear ran down her cheek, leaving a trail of silver, caught by the last moments of evening light.”

— Garth Nix

138. “For a moment, she wondered why she was not shocked herself. But she wasn’t. Everything changed that day at Coldhallow House, that last day, not least Elinor herself. She wasn’t sure what she was to become, but it was not someone who would be shocked by the unconventional.”

— Garth Nix

139. “Thank you,” said Lirael. “I am glad you didn’t leave us out in the cold, despite rule thirty-four.” “Rule thirty-six,” corrected Mirelle, straight-faced as ever.”

— Garth Nix

140. “Nothing in this world better reflects the difference between life and death than the power of choice.”

— Garth Nix

141. “She looked competent, professional, a traveller who could look after herself. At the same time, she looked less like someone called Sabriel and more like the Abhorsen, capital letter and all.”

— Garth Nix

142. “No where,” said Merlin quietly, “Somewhere. An in-between place.”

— Garth Nix

143. “It is the nature of Death to take, but the nature of Life to give.”

— Garth Nix

144. “Merlin cleared his throat and began to sing in a powerful baritone: I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral – Vivien leaped upon him and put her hands to his throat. The siblings swayed to and fro, sending clothing racks scudding on their casters, until Merlin managed to weakly get out, “Enough! Okay, I won’t sing.”

— Garth Nix

145. “The point? It is a ceremony, to quiet the mind, before conversation;.”

— Garth Nix

146. “A passion for something was energy to be exploited, not thwarted.”

— Garth Nix

147. “The final confirmation of strangeness lay beyond the Wall. It was clear and cool on the Ancelstierre side, and the sun was shining – but Sabriel could see snow falling steadily behind the Wall, and snow-heavy clouds clustered right up to the Wall, where they suddenly stopped, as if some mighty weather-knife had simply sheared through the sky.”

— Garth Nix