Top 450 Patrick Ness Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Was it prediction? Had she had a proper vision? Or was it a command, as it so often feels in the case of the prophetic? When you predict the future, when you do so strongly and you cling to it, how much of that future do you then cause to happen?”

— Patrick Ness

452. “He is worse than the others, I show. He is worst of all of them. Because– Because he knew he was doing wrong. He felt the pain of his actions– But he did not amend them, shows the Sky. The rest are worth as much as their pack animals, I show, but worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.”

— Patrick Ness

453. “Remember,” he says. “Hope.”

— Patrick Ness

454. “The past always fails those who grasp at it.”

— Patrick Ness

455. “A sudden, hard wind swirled up around them, and the monster spread its arms out wide, so wide they seemed to reach to opposite horizons, so wide they seemed big enough to encompass the world.”

— Patrick Ness

456. “But how are you this fine evening? – My arches are falling. – Isn’t that the first line of a sonnet?”

— Patrick Ness

457. “Why would any innocent woman object to being identified?”

— Patrick Ness

458. “The world’s a dangerous place when you don’t know enough.”

— Patrick Ness

459. “I look at the knife again, sitting there on the moss like a thing without properties, a thing made of metal as separate from a boy as can be, a thing which casts all blame from itself to the boy who uses it.”

— Patrick Ness

460. “We would have wanted you to like us. We realise now that we probably would have failed.”

— Patrick Ness

461. “Men and their Noise. I don’t know how they do it, how they stand each other.”

— Patrick Ness

462. “I’m too busy repeatedly counting ketchup bottles and wishing I was dead, wishing I was dead, wishing I was dead, wishing I was dead.”

— Patrick Ness

463. “Death is suddenly objectionable to you when the dead has a name you know?”

— Patrick Ness

464. “We negotiated peace with them the first time, my girl, because we were in a position of strength. That’s how wars work, that’s how truces work. We show them we’ve got more power than they imagine and they’re more willing to make peace.”

— Patrick Ness

465. “I can’t tell you what’s real for you. But in return, you can’t say what’s real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.”

— Patrick Ness

466. “The loud is a different kind of loud, because swamp loud is just curiosity, creachers figuring out who you are and if yer a threat. Whereas the town knows all about you already and wants to know more and wants to beat you with what it knows till how can you have any of yerself left at all? Swamp.”

— Patrick Ness

467. “That’s for the Captain to know,” Treasure snapped, and if my story makes her seem unpleasant and paranoid and a suck-up, that’s because she was unpleasant and paranoid and a suck-up.”

— Patrick Ness

468. “If she needed him, he’d be there instantly, no questions asked, and he knew she’d do the same. She was here now. They had their bulgogi. This is what a family was. Or should be.”

— Patrick Ness

469. “Her settlement, for example, were peaceable and as the calls to war had remained voluntary, they had held back, hoping it would pass. Nevertheless, they had cursed her for wanting to leave with him, telling her of the atrocities committed by his people out in the west. They had turned their backs on her in disgust when she told them he was a person, not a whole people.”

— Patrick Ness

470. “Just because my thoughts and feelings don’t spill out into the world in a shout that never stops doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”

— Patrick Ness

471. “Soothe your throats. Injustice has not followed you here.”

— Patrick Ness

472. “Hope is terrifying, Viola,” he said. “No one wants to admit it, but it is.”

— Patrick Ness

473. “A peace that blacked yer eye,” I say. “A peace that split yer lip.”

— Patrick Ness

474. “Yes,’ said Jasper, flatly, ’and it was very illuminating. It is, perhaps, less illuminating now.”

— Patrick Ness

475. “For Rachel, it might have even been worse, because she had known the rules for a long time, had thrived on them, and had maybe now – if her equally unprecedented lunch outburst was anything to go by – found them empty.”

— Patrick Ness

476. “Albert got her to her feet. He gathered her few wayward things and delicately placed a hand on an unburnt spot to help her walk. – You’re going to have this two-tone problem for a while. Your backside is as white as virgin pearl. – A moan will have to suffice for a witty rejoinder. – I’ll pretend to be dazzled.”

— Patrick Ness

477. “I think maybe everybody falls,” I say. “I think maybe we all do. And I don’t think that’s the asking.” I pull on her arms gently to make sure she’s listening. “I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”

— Patrick Ness

478. “Jarvis had to keep avoiding the increasing numbers of both rioters and fleeing citizens as well as a number of people in cars with the same idea. He was surprised to feel annoyed. Here was the first honest-to-goodness miracle he was witness to in his entire life as a clergyman and he wasn’t able to see it because he had to keep his eyes on the road. Why were the mysteries of faith so inscrutable?”

— Patrick Ness

479. “You can’t redeem him, Todd,” she says, a little softer but I flinch a bit at the word redeem. “You can’t. Because he doesn’t want it.”

— Patrick Ness

480. “But hell you make for yourself is still hell, maybe.”

— Patrick Ness

481. “A few of you are here by choice. Or at least by Switzerland.”

— Patrick Ness

482. “Because who can say in the end that any one of these places is more real than any other?”

— Patrick Ness

483. “Probably for the best, though. Turns out New World’s oceans aren’t really for fishing.” “Why not?” “Oh, the fish are the size of your boat and they swim up alongside and look you in the eye and tell you how they’re going to eat you.” She laughs a little. “And then they eat you.”

— Patrick Ness

484. “But in my chest, there was still fear, and I didn’t know which kind it was. Fear with hope, or fear without it.”

— Patrick Ness

485. “Tam stands and they clear the table, taking the dishes into their kitchen and leaving me and Viola sitting there by ourselves.”

— Patrick Ness

486. “One night a whole storehouse of wheat was taken, so completely and successfully it’s obvious now there’s people in the town and the army who’ve been helping ’em. Which is bad news for the town and the army.”

— Patrick Ness

487. “The difference is that I think you never do it. Even if you’re tempted, even if you’re really close, because who knows? There might be more.”

— Patrick Ness

488. “Manchee and me are quiet as possible going past the front door of the Church. Praying Noise comes from inside, it’s got a special feel to it, a special purply sick feel like men are bleeding it out, even tho it’s always the same stuff but the purply blood just keeps on coming. Help us, save us, forgive us, help us, save us, forgive us, get us outta here, please, God, please, God, please, God, tho as far as I know no one’s never heard no Noise back from this God fella.”

— Patrick Ness

489. “They’re fighting a war over who can be more peaceful.”

— Patrick Ness

490. “A memory is not the thing remembered.”

— Patrick Ness

491. “But here, now, again, this was more than the body, or the mind, or the personality. It wasn’t holy, that was a whole other mess, but it was something that could be touched only here.”

— Patrick Ness

492. “Do you know what separates us from the beasts, Viola?’ I frowned, sensing a lesson. ‘The ability to wait to open a present?’ He laughed. ‘Fire,’ he said. ‘The ability to make fire at will. It allowed us light to see in the darkness, warmth against the cold, a tool to cook our food.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Delta’s engines. ‘Fire is what eventually led to travel across the black beyond, the ability to start a new life on a New World.”

— Patrick Ness

493. “A world made of words, Seth thinks, where you live for a while.”

— Patrick Ness