Top 70 Malorie Blackman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Boys don’t cry, but men do.”

— Malorie Blackman

2. “But remember this if nothing else: I love you more than there are words or stars. I love you more than there are thoughts and feelings. I love you more than there are seconds or moments gone or to come. I love you.”

— Malorie Blackman

3. “The truth isn’t going to bend itself to suit you.”

— Malorie Blackman

4. “Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”

— Malorie Blackman

5. “Why was it that when noughts committed criminal acts, the fact that they were noughts was always pointed out? The banker was a Cross. The newsreader didn’t even mention it.”

— Malorie Blackman

6. “That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is. But don’t you believe them.”

— Malorie Blackman

8. “When a chance for real happiness comes by, grab it with both hands and devour it. If it lasts five minutes or five lifetimes, it’s still worth it.”

— Malorie Blackman

9. “I hadn’t fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ was talking out of his or her armpit.”

— Malorie Blackman

10. “The point is, you have family and friends who love you. You have a world out there just waiting for you to conquer it. You have a life that will be anything you make it. That’s the point.”

— Malorie Blackman

11. “Books and knowledge don’t make for a safe world. Just the opposite. Books and knowledge are facets of the truth and the truth can be very dangerous.”

— Malorie Blackman

12. “There are no such things as friends. Just acquaintances who haven’t let you down yet.”

— Malorie Blackman

13. “She stays lost in the middle of her own world somewhere. We can’t get in and she doesn’t come out. Not often anyway, and certainly not for any length of time. But her mind takes her to somewhere kind, I think, to judge by the peaceful, serene look on her face most of the time.”

— Malorie Blackman

14. “The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we would want to hear.”

— Malorie Blackman

15. “And things go unsaid soon get forgotten.”

— Malorie Blackman

16. “Never, ever allow yourself to feel. Feelings kill.”

— Malorie Blackman

17. “A backup plan means somewhere in my head, I think I might fail and that word is not in my vocabulary. Plus I’m too talented to fail.”

— Malorie Blackman

18. “And just like that, I’d been assessed and judged. Nurse Fashoda didn’t know the first thing about me but she’d taken one look at my face and now she reckoned she knew my whole life story – what had gone before and what was yet to come.”

— Malorie Blackman

19. “Because my mum and dad brought me up to believe that people are different but equal. And that I should treat everyone, no matter who, with the same respect I’d like to be shown.”

— Malorie Blackman

20. “People are people. We’ll always find a way to mess up, doesn’t matter who’s in charge.”

— Malorie Blackman

21. “Noughts... Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn’t a name we’d chosen for ourselves. It was a name we’d been given.”

— Malorie Blackman

22. “Dear God, please let him have heard me. Please. Please. If you’re up there. Somewhere.”

— Malorie Blackman

23. “Well, it’s true. If she ever had an original thought it would die of loneliness.”

— Malorie Blackman

24. “Jude’s rule number five: Never get to close to anyone or anything that you can’t walk away at a moment’s notice if you have to. When you have to.”

— Malorie Blackman

25. “Sometimes the things you’re convinced you don’t want turn out to be the thing you need the most in this world.”

— Malorie Blackman

26. “Love was like an avalanche, with Sephy and I hand-in-hand racing like hell to get out of it’s way-only, instead of running away from it, we kept running straight towards it.”

— Malorie Blackman

27. “What was it about the differences in others that scared some people so much?”

— Malorie Blackman

28. “I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

— Malorie Blackman

29. “It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small.”

— Malorie Blackman

30. “I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it’s not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself?”

— Malorie Blackman

31. “When did we stop being people, being human?”

— Malorie Blackman

32. “That’s why I started crying. That’s why I couldn’t stop. For all the things we might’ve had and all the things we’re never going to have.”

— Malorie Blackman

33. “He was constantly surprising me like that. I had thought I didn’t like surprises, but I found I did when they came from him.”

— Malorie Blackman

34. “The media called us ruthless terrorists. We’re not. We’re just fighting for what’s right. Being born a nought shouldn’t automatically slam shut myriad doors before you’ve even drawn your first breath.”

— Malorie Blackman

35. “Thoughts can creep up on you, or they can hit harder than a wrecking ball.”

— Malorie Blackman

36. “There’s more to life than just us noughts and you Crosses.”

— Malorie Blackman

37. “You wanna know the difference between a mosquito and a lawyer? One is a blood-sucking parasite and the other is an insect.”

— Malorie Blackman

38. “And round and round and round. Why couldn’t I get past the letter? Like poison id had seeped into every image and every memory I kept of Callum, polluting them until I couldn’t tell which was real and what was just wishful thinking any more. Until at last, I was forced to face the inescapable fact that, for whatever reason, Callum had written the letter.”

— Malorie Blackman

39. “Jude’s fourth law: Caring equals vulnerability. Never show either.”

— Malorie Blackman

40. “It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small. Scared of being with Sephy, scared of being away from her.”

— Malorie Blackman

41. “He pulls the hood over my head. I try to pull back. I’m not trying to run away. I just want to see her... One last time...”

— Malorie Blackman

42. “Whoever came up with the saying ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ was talking out of his or her armpit.”

— Malorie Blackman

43. “The sky was a blanket of grey, tarmac-coloured clouds with no hint of the blue beyond them.”

— Malorie Blackman

44. “That was all it took – a shower of rain, the slam of a door, the thrust of a knife or a gunshot – and just like that, a person could be gone with nothing but the memories of others to show that they’d ever existed.”

— Malorie Blackman

45. “I suppose it doesn’t occur to you that I can think the system just as unjust as you do.”

— Malorie Blackman

46. “Mrs Bawden yanked me away from the table and dragged me across the food hall. I tried to twist away from her, but she had a grip like a python on steroids.”

— Malorie Blackman

47. “The status quo is never news, only challenges to it.”

— Malorie Blackman

48. “But faith is so easy to hold onto when you don’t need it. And so hard to find when you do.”

— Malorie Blackman

49. “Sorry implies that if you could go back, you’d do things differently. We both know that you wouldn’t change a thing.”

— Malorie Blackman

50. “More and more I was beginning to feel like a spectator in my own life.”

— Malorie Blackman