Top 450 Patrick Ness Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “You may have no choice.” “There’s always a choice,” Viola says by my side. “Oh, people like to say that,” the Mayor says. “It makes them feel better.”

— Patrick Ness

452. “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

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

— Patrick Ness

454. “The devil always outnumbers his foes,” he said. “Even if he is alone.”

— Patrick Ness

455. “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

456. “Because nothing I did with Charlie ever once felt like that kiss with Jack.”

— Patrick Ness

457. “He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like i’m standing on the edge of an Abyss, that I’m about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there’d never be a way out.”

— Patrick Ness

458. “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

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

— Patrick Ness

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

— Patrick Ness

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

— Patrick Ness

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

— Patrick Ness

463. “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

464. “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

465. “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

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. “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

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

— Patrick Ness

469. “It was like looking into the most despairing kind of madness, a madness that only felt hurt and pain, a madness that therefore could only act in hurt and pain.”

— Patrick Ness

470. “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

471. “Remember,” he says. “Hope.”

— Patrick Ness

472. “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

473. “Drew missed Peter when he left, but it was like missing a hole.”

— Patrick Ness

474. “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

475. “Of course you are afraid, the monster said, pushing him slowly forward. And yet you will still do it.”

— Patrick Ness

476. “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

477. “I knew it,” Conor grumbled. “These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love.”

— Patrick Ness

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

— Patrick Ness

479. “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

480. “But what good is being smart when you speak words and no one hears the ones you mean?”

— Patrick Ness

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

— Patrick Ness

482. “But then there’s her eyes and they look at you and don’t brook no arguments, don’t look like they ever doubt themselves, even when they should. Maybe they’re the eyes of a giant after all.”

— Patrick Ness

483. “She can smell him now, a smudge of unwashed skin, poverty, extreme loneliness. She takes the can, still holding his hand, unrolling it, running a finger across its weathered palm.”

— Patrick Ness

484. “That is what death is, a state of constant hunger, for the things you’ve left behind, for your memories, for life.”

— Patrick Ness

485. “His face is trying to look calm but everyone can hear how badly he don’t wanna die, how childlike his wishes are sounding, how loud his newly uncured Noise is spilling out all over the place.”

— Patrick Ness

486. “He’s awake,” she said, tears of joy still streaming. “Lee, Wilf. He’s awake.”

— Patrick Ness

487. “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

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

— Patrick Ness

489. “Conor shook his head. “That’s a terrible story. And a cheat.” It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers’ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You’d be surprised. Conor.”

— Patrick Ness

490. “HERE It’s- Can I say? It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.”

— Patrick Ness

491. “But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.” “And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person.”

— Patrick Ness

492. “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

493. “Crazy people don’t need an explanayshun for nothing.”

— Patrick Ness