Top 120 Kelly Barnhill Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Curiosity is the curse of the Clever. Or perhaps cleverness is the curse of the Curious.”

— Kelly Barnhill

2. “Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Some of the most wonderful things in the world are invisible. Trusting in invisible things makes them more powerful and wondrous.”

— Kelly Barnhill

3. “Lost, yes, but there was a freedom in being lost. There was a freedom in abandonment too, if you thought about it right.”

— Kelly Barnhill

4. “Knowledge is power, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden.”

— Kelly Barnhill

5. “A story can tell the truth... but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed.”

— Kelly Barnhill

6. “Death is always sudden, even when it isn’t.”

— Kelly Barnhill

7. “My love isn’t divided,” she said. “It is multiplied.”

— Kelly Barnhill

8. “The heart is built of starlight And time. A pinprick of longing lost in the dark. An unbroken chord linking the Infinite to the Infinite. My heart wishes upon your heart and the wish is granted. Meanwhile the world spins. Meanwhile the universe expands. Meanwhile the mystery of love reveals itself, again and again, in the mystery of you. I have gone. I will return. Glerk.”

— Kelly Barnhill

9. “Their backs bent under the weight of secrets.”

— Kelly Barnhill

10. “Curiosity is the curse of the Clever. Or perhaps cleverness is the curse of the Curious. In any case, I am never lacking for either, I’m afraid, which does keep me rather busy.”

— Kelly Barnhill

11. “A word, after all, is a kind of magic. It locks the substance of a thing in sound or symbol, and affixes it to the ear, or paper, or stone. Words call the world into being. That’s power indeed.”

— Kelly Barnhill

12. “Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”

— Kelly Barnhill

13. “And the things that they did not speak of began to outweigh the thing that they did. Each secret, each unspoken thing was round and hard and heavy and cold, like a stone hung around the necks of both grandmother and girl. Their backs bent under the weight of secrets.”

— Kelly Barnhill

14. “Sorrow is dangerous.”

— Kelly Barnhill

15. “When you apologize, however, you may begin healing yourself. It is not for us. It is for you. I recommend it.”

— Kelly Barnhill

16. “Stuff. The stuff of stars. The stuff of light. The stuff of a planet before it is a planet. The stuff of a baby before it is born. The stuff of a seed before it is a sycamore. Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”

— Kelly Barnhill

17. “Some of us... choose love over power. Indeed, most of us do.”

— Kelly Barnhill

18. “Not all knowledge comes from the mind. Your body, your heart, your intuition. Sometimes memories even have minds of their own.”

— Kelly Barnhill

19. “How many feelings can one heart hold? She looked at her grandmother. At her mother. At the man protecting his family. Infinite, Luna thought. The way the universe is infinite. It is light and dark and endless motion; it is space and time, and space within space, and time within time. And she knew: there is no limit to what the heart can carry.”

— Kelly Barnhill

20. “Memory was a slippery thing – slick moss on an unstable slope – and it was ever so easy to lose one’s footing and fall.”

— Kelly Barnhill

21. “Death is always sudden,” Glerk said. His eyes had begun to itch. “Even when it isn’t.”

— Kelly Barnhill

22. “The stars cut into the inky black sky, like glinting shards of glass.”

— Kelly Barnhill

23. “The more he learned, the more he knew what more there was to learn. There were deep pools of knowledge in dusty volumes quietly shelved in libraries, and Antain thirsted for all of them.”

— Kelly Barnhill

24. “Sometimes it felt to him that the world was heavy, that the air, thick with sorrow, draped over his mind and body and vision, like a fog.”

— Kelly Barnhill

25. “Patience does not run Nor blow, nor skitter, nor falter. Patience is the swell of the ocean; Patience is the sigh of the mountain; Patience is the shirr of the Bog; Patience is the chorus of stars, Infinitely singing.’ ” “I.”

— Kelly Barnhill

26. “Magic and madness are link after all.”

— Kelly Barnhill

27. “There is no freedom without wholeness, no hope unless the thing that has been broken is restored.”

— Kelly Barnhill

28. “It was a fine thing indeed, Luna thought, being eleven. She loved the symmetry of it, and the lack of symmetry. Eleven was a number that was visually even, but functionally not – it looked one way and behaved in quite another. Just like most eleven-year-olds, or so she assumed.”

— Kelly Barnhill

29. “It was wrong not to be curious, it was wrong not to wonder.”

— Kelly Barnhill

30. “It’s so easy, the madwoman wanted to tell them. Just go mad. Madness and magic are linked, after all. Or I think they are. Every day the world shuffles and bends. Every day I find something shiny in the rubble. Shiny paper. Shiny truth. Shiny magic. Shiny, shiny, shiny.”

— Kelly Barnhill

31. “A word is a magic thing. It holds the essence of an object or idea and pins it to the world. A word can set a universe in motion.”

— Kelly Barnhill

32. “I dream of a garden overripe and wild. Of a woman gathering the sea into her hands and letting it fall in many colored petals to a green, green earth. I dream of words on a page transforming to birds, and birds transforming to children, and children transforming to stars.”

— Kelly Barnhill

33. “The strongest trees on the mountain are the short, gnarled jacks. They let themselves bow and twist, and they live. They survive snowstorms and avalanches and wind. Those.”

— Kelly Barnhill

34. “And the more they asked, the more they wondered. And the more they wondered, the more they hoped. And the more they hoped, the more the clouds of sorrow lifted, drifted, and burned away in the heat of a brightening sky.”

— Kelly Barnhill

35. “Luna’s magic was infused in every bone, every tissue, every cell. Her mother’s magic was more like a jumble of trinkets left in a basket after a long journey – bits and pieces knocking together. Still, Luna could feel her mother’s magic – as well as her mother’s longing and love – buzzing against her skin. It emboldened the power surging inside her, directing the swells of magic. Luna held her mother’s hand a little bit tighter.”

— Kelly Barnhill

36. “People died. And while it made their loved ones sad, it didn’t seem to bother the dead person one bit. They were dead, after all. They had moved on to other matters.”

— Kelly Barnhill

37. “Fyrian was prone to the hiccups. And his hiccups were usually on fire.”

— Kelly Barnhill

38. “Human babies are only tiny for an instant – their growing up is as swift as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.”

— Kelly Barnhill

39. “She was eleven, after all. She was both even and odd. She was ready to be many things at once – child, grown-up, poet, engineer, botanist, dragon. The list went on.”

— Kelly Barnhill

40. “All stories are lies until someone believes in them.”

— Kelly Barnhill

41. “Not every story is true. And sometimes the things that were wicked become the things that save us, and the things that were good doom us to misery and pain.”

— Kelly Barnhill

42. “Intelligence does not mean infallibility, nor does it mean immobility. Intelligence means the ability to learn.”

— Kelly Barnhill

43. “And sometimes the things that were wicked become the things that save us, and the things that were good doom us to misery and pain. We lift our eyes to the heavens, but we live on the ground.”

— Kelly Barnhill

44. “Sister Witch didn’t truck with hoping. Hoping was irrational, impractical, and imprecise. Sister Witch was a solver.”

— Kelly Barnhill

45. “But as the years passed, Ned’s silence grew and grew. It pressed upon his face and his body. It leaked into the house and spread outward into the yard. His silence had weight. It had substance and presence and teeth.”

— Kelly Barnhill

46. “Starlight, as every witch knows, is a marvelous food for a growing infant.”

— Kelly Barnhill

47. “Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth.”

— Kelly Barnhill

48. “Yet was a powerful word, Ned decided. Very powerful indeed.”

— Kelly Barnhill

49. “Anger is a funny thing. And it does funny things to us if we keep it inside. I encourage you to consider a question: Who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself not to feel angry?”

— Kelly Barnhill

50. “It’s all the same. Don’t you see? The Beast, the Bog, the Poem, the Poet, the world. They all love you. They’ve loved you this whole time.”

— Kelly Barnhill