Cressida Cowell Quotes

We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time.

OUTCASTS! R-R-RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, YOU S-S-SSTUPID H-H-HUMANS!!!

History, you see, is like the interlocking wheels turning in a ticking-thing. Something unexpected happens, some sort of hiccup... the wheels are jogged... and then they set off again, beating out the time in a new pattern.

Happy and giggly and bustly, the Hogfly ignored Hiccup's strangled cries of: "Hoglfy! Come back here, Hogfly!"
"Ooh!" it squeaked in delighted confusion. "You all look so lovely! How am I to choose which one of you to be my friend?"
It perched on the sinister swoop of the Razorwing's nose.
"Where's my biscuit? Are you married? Be my valentine ... "
"I can't bear to watch ... " groaned Fishlegs.
It was like seeing an enthusiastic bunny rabbit trying to make friends with a heavily armed, bunny-eating cobra.

The dragon bracelet that Humongous created, out of misplaced love and gratitude, in the hellish nightmare of the Lava-Lout Jail-Forges is exquisitely made, for he was a far better goldsmith than he was a singer.
It curls around my arm, its shining wings folded back, as if about to unfurl and take off, and now that its ruby eyes are set into the gold, you cannot see their tear shape, so they seem to be laughing rather than crying.
It is a constant reminder to me of the human ability to create something beautiful even when things are at their darkest.

There may yet come a time when Heroes are needed once more.
There may yet come a time when the dragons will come back.

Tomorrow. There was something hopeful, even about the word.

Oh, for Thor's sake ... " said Hiccup. "I thought that was just a story ... "
"Stories come from somewhere," said the witch. "The past haunts the present in more ways than we realise.

A GIANT heart
Needs a GIANT life!
GIANT arms
Can hold a world!

Let me lead a GIANT'S life!
No little steps, no holding back!
A GIANT'S way, a GIANT'S track!

Let my mistakes
Be GIANT ones!

For I can't live in little worlds!

I need the space to run my fill
I need to jump from hill to hill

And if you take my woods from me
I'll wander out into the sea
And try to find another world

So I can live a GIANT'S life!

The first Dragon was enough to give you nightmares.
The second Dragon was enough to give your nightmares nightmares.

Human hearts are not made out of stone.
Thank Thor.
They can break, and heal, and beat again.

You do have to listen to the stories, for stories always mean something. The question that worries me is: WHAT exactly do they mean?

The Hero cares not for a wild winter's storm. For it carries him swift on the back of the storm. All may be lost and our hearts may be worn, but a Hero fights forever.

Sometimes our little human splashings are not enough. However hard we try, however strong our heroic human wills (and us humans have such a capacity, such a heroic capacity for believing that the impossible might be possible), sometimes our ridiculously puny human arms are too weak. Sometimes the world is just too big for us, the hurricane too wild, the sea so huge, that it wears out even the bravest of hearts, the strongest of wills.

My poison is creeping through his body.
My strong venom is killing his heart.

The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit. So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong?

You can't put': Hiccup in charge, sir, he's USELESS.

Books were despised by the Viking Tribes, as they were seen as a horrible civilizing influence and a threat to the barbarian culture.

Are you the stuff that hero's are made of? Or are you a jellyfish in a skirt?

He says he comes in peace," said Hiccup "He's still going to kill us, though.

Thank you for nothing, you stupid reptile.

Let us in, let us in,' shrieked the wind. 'We're very, very hungry.

You see how good and evil are twisted together?
Like a golden dragon bracelet snaking brightly about a person's arm.

Most of us are lucky not to be Kings and Heroes, because we do not have to make the choices that Kings and Heroes have to make.

Well, suffering swordfish," exclaimed Fishlegs. "Hiccup is LEFTHANDED.

I didn't mean to come here ...
And I didn't mean to stay ...
It's just where the sea wind blew me
One accidental day ...

Come on, Fishlegs," whispered Camicazi, whistling happily. "You know we have to do this. Besides, I feel like a bit of exercise. We've been cooped up in that hideout for way too long."
Frankly, at this point, Camicazi had grown so fed up that if Hiccup had suggested hang gliding off the toe-talons of the dragon Furious she'd have been up for it.
"A bit of exercise?" blustered Fishlegs. "A bit of exercise? This is not some kind of Viking version of Girls Keep Fit!

Always sailing, sailing, sailing ... never quite reaching.

Norbert the Nutjob may have been a maniac, but lunacy and genius are very close together, and it had to be admitted, he was a great Dreamer.
Perhaps the inventor-madmen of the Future will dream its like again.

Long ago, on the wild and windy isle of Berk, a smallish Viking with a longish name stood up to his ankles in snow.

But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.

If it doesn't end well, then it isn't the end.

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.

Imagine if you had spent the whole first part of your life trying to walk on your hands. The clumsiness of it, always falling over, always stumbling, always the last at everything. Imagine the joy of discovering that in fact you could walk on your feet after all.

Follow me, reader, if you dare. Take my hand, for we can fly swifter than the Deadly Shadow; we can follow the sound of ticking teeth faster than they can, and trace the Hero back to where he lies, on the little isle of Hero's End.

One, the search for the fang-free dragon taught me that fear and intimidation might not be the best way to train dragons. Two, the sword: that sometimes best is second-best. Three, the shield: that sometimes freedom must be fought for. Four, the ticking-thing: that when you fight for your friend, you are also fighting for yourself. Five, the ruby heart's stone: that love never dies. Six, the arrow from the land-that-does-not-exist: that you must make things right in the Old World before you go looking for the New, and sometimes the things that you are looking for are right at home. Seven, the key-that-opens-all-locks: that accidents happen for a reason. Eight, the Throne: that power can corrupt. Nine, the Crown: that you have to keep on trying even though you are beaten before you even star. And Ten, the dragon Jewel," finished Hiccup. "You need to know what it is to be a slave, before you can be a King.

The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today.

That is a terrible plan." "Hiccup's plans are always t-terrible." "Hey! You're still here, aren't you?

Please do not blame the story.
The story cannot help itself. We do not realize it at the time, but sometimes the story we are all a part of is not just a story about Vikings and islands and dragons.
It is a story about growing up.
And one of the things about growing up, one of the inescapable, inevitable laws, is that one day...
One day... one day...
It is going to happen.
I am sorry, but it's true.

Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters.

History is a set of repeating circles, like the tide. The wind does blow through the ruins of tomorrow. But it is more a question of two steps forward, one step back. Humans and dragons make the same mistakes, again and again, but things do get better over time

GO FOR HIS EYES! OR BITE HIM ON THE NOSE! DRAGON NOSES ARE VERY SENSITIVE!
Oh, very helpful, Camicazi, very helpful ... thought Hiccup. What if he doesn't obligingly hold me up to his nose? What if the only part I get close to is the TEETH?

Does this look like a dragon who would poo in a helmet???

Strange how a story sometimes seems to end just how it started, in a circle.

The world will need a Hero, and it might as well be you.

And long after Kings are forgotten, and their names have fallen into dust, the good deeds and the actions of the Heroes live on in glory.

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic ...

Great things are only made out of love and out of pain. A great sword must be made out of the very best steel. But what truly makes the sword great, is what happens to the sword after it is made. We call this the 'testing' of the sword. The sword is bashed and hammered and hollered into shape by the bright hammer. It is thrust into the fierce heat of the fire, where it softens, and then it is quickly quenched in water, where it hardens again. The higher the temperature, the fiercer the fire, the tougher and the greater the sword eventually becomes. The whole testing process can make a sword, or break it. The same could be said for the making of a Hero.

But sometimes the bravest thing a Hero has to do is not fighting monsters and cheating death and witches. It is facing the consequences of his own actions.

K-k-keep your helmet on. T-t-toothless doing his BEST.

However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords ... I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams.
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together ... and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood.

History is a ghost story. My own childhood has passed into history, and the ghosts I find there are the ghosts of Heroes and dragons and Berserks and witches, and it has become fashionable not to believe in these things anymore. But I believe, for I was there.

Toothless crossed his eyes and made a gulping noise with his throat as if he was swallowing ...
"AAAAAAARGH!" screamed Hiccup.
Toothless spat Ziggerastica onto the floor.
"Only j-j-joking," he said.

Sometimes it is not until the Final Chapter that you realise what a quest has REALLY been about all along.

I myself grew up to be not only a Hero, but also a Writer. When I was an adult, I rewrote A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, and I included not only some descriptions of the various deadly dragon species, and a useful Dragonese Dictionary, but also this story of how the book came to be written in the first place.

This is the book that you are holding in your hands right now.

Perhaps you even borrowed it from a Library?

If so, thank Thor that the sinister figure of the Hairy Scary Librarian is not lurking around a corner, hiding in the shadows, Heart-Slicers at the ready, or that the punishment for your curiosity is not the whirring whine of a Driller Dragon's drill.

You, dear reader, I am sure cannot imagine what it might to be like to live in a world in which books are banned.

For surely such things will never happen in the Future?

Thank Thor that you live in a time and a place where people have the right to live and think and write and read their books in peace, and there are no need for Heroes anymore ...

And spare a thought for those who have not been so lucky.

This is the problem with adventures. They bring out parts of you that you never even knew were there.

Glory comes not to the weak
A treasure land shines out so strong
We see it clear from far away
O Great and Brave and Mighty Thor
I hope that that was land I saw
Once before... long ago...
HO!

Was it possible that Warriors had been mistaken in their view of Magic all along? Could there be another way of looking at things, other than the Warrior way?....Wish's world view was spinning upside down, and that is always a difficult moment.

I was not the sort of boy who could train a dragon with a mere lifting of an eyebrow. I was not a natural at the Heroism business. I had to work at it. This is the story of becoming a Hero the Hard Way.

Everything we do, you see, has its consequences and repercussions, every kind act, and every bad, every friend we make, and every enemy. Everything is connected.

Notice how the crucible of the story changes those who listen to it, those who are within it, and the person who is telling it, all at the same time.

You cannot fight time itself, slay the minutes and hours with your blade, wipe the bleeding seconds on your shirt. Time cannot be fought.

On the back of the Silver Phantom I have flown so high that his wing-tips seemed to touch the very moon itself…

February turned into March and Hiccup was still thinking. A few flowers made the mistake of appearing and were immediately blasted out of existence by a couple of hard frosts that had kept themselves back for this very purpose.

A HERO... IS... FOREVER.
Adieu, Snotlout.
I could not have done this without you.
I carry you with me, every step I take, every decision I make. You are part of my blood, and I would never have gotten this far without you.
We shall meet again, in a better world than this one.

What are you doing in there, Camicazi? I told you to escape! And how did you know this was my sand yacht?"
"You wrote 'The Hopeful Puffin 2' on the back of it," explained the basket, adding hastily, "and I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of this Cami-whatsit.

There are some Questions, some battles, some Hiccups that are worth losing a world for. And perhaps even when all ends in disaster, you cannot do the wrong thing, if you do it out of love.

I wanted to be a King who would found a New World, not in some misty country far across the seas, but right here, right now, at home.

This is the problem with stories. Stories always mean something. The question is ... What exactly do they mean?

The Supper is still singing.

The past haunts the present in more ways than we think. It certainly scares the living daylights out of ME"~ Old Wrinkly

But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages.

But Tact and Sensitivity were not Gobber's strong points, and he took the first five minutes to come up with "Hiccup copped it. SORRY," and the spent the second five minutes tearing his beard out.

Courage what is within is more important than what is without.

For a Hero cannot triumph all the time. Sometimes he will be defeated, and how he faces that defeat is a test of his character.

Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that Grimbeard the Ghastly, on the deck of his ship The Endless Journey, threw the sword Endeavor up into the air. Up and up it spun, through the inky blackness, across the cavernous span of a hundred years, until, entirely of its own accord, my own left hand sprang out of space and stars and never-ending time and caught it. Now that I am so very old, I am dreaming once again. And in my dream, I am the one throwing the sword. It is spinning now, in the black starlit waters of my dream, right above your head, dear reader. A sword that may look second-best, and secondhand, but but carries the memories of a thousand lost fights, a history lesson in itself. Reach out, and catch it by the hilt. Swear by its name, Endeavor, to do your utmost to make the world a better place than when you arrived in it. For look! There will be dragons all around you, as camouflaged as a Stealth Dragon.

If you were a fanciful person, you might have said that it was almost as if that box was looking for Hiccup.
But we are not fanciful people, and that would be ridiculous.

It's only paranoia," whispered the Wodensfang, "If things aren't out to get you...

WARNING
Any Relationship to any historical fact WHATSOEVER is entirely coincidental. You have been WARNED

Uh-oh," thought Hiccup, who was an intelligent boy. "This person wants to kill me.

Wartihog put up his hand. "What happens if we can't read, sir?"
"No boasting, Wartihog!" boomed Gobber. "Get some idiot to read it for you.

I have never cared for Castles
or a Crown that grips too tight,
Let the night sky be my starry roof
and the moon my only light,
My Heart was born a Hero,
my storm-bound sword won't rest,
I left the Harbour long ago
on a Never-ending Quest,
I am off to the horizon,
where the wild wind blows the foam,
Come get lost with me, love,
and the sea shall be our home!

And this was the surprising thing about life on Berk. It was a bit like the sea itself. One minute it was all storms, and shipwrecks, and desperate escapes from deadly dragons, the next it was as calm, and peacefully restful, as if these things had never happened.