Kate Milford Quotes

She was thirteen, the daughter of a bicycle mechanic, and she couldn't ride this bicycle. It fought her; it threw her; it hated her.

Everybody feels better when there's cake

But when things were passed to you, you were supposed to pass them on to someone else eventually too.

Plus, the thing about attics and basements was, everything in there had once been a treasure to someone. Otherwise there'd have been no reason to keep it.

A crossroads can be something special, a compass with arms reaching to places you might never find the way to again; places that might exist, or might have existed once, or might exist someday, depending on whether or not you decide to look for them.

Most things cost something you can give up, but they aren't worth anything – not really, not in the end. But some things . . . some have to be given free, because if you had to put a price on them, their true value would be too great for any one person to afford.

In a city, with all of its enclaves and boundaries, both real and imagined, it is impossible not to feel the presence of those who are not like you and impossible not to feel like an outsider.

It is not merely our adversaries we must investigate ... We must always work to know ourselves better, too.

The world is not simple. The world is not one place. It's the sum of an impossible number of incomprehensible things, and if you start out on any road in the world and follow it for any distance at all, sooner or later you enter into a strange country.

Any book in the world - if there was only one way to read and understand it, what would be the point of reading that book?

Always check for traps, left is always right unless there's a middle, always put your healer in the best armor and wear your magic rings on your toes instead of your fingers ... What else? ... Always have rope.

But if home suddenly becomes not like home, what then?

The beauty of fantasy is that it allows the protagonist to pass through fear to come to know this different reality and to find a place in it.

Cities have the capability to at any moment shift out of the familiar, even if you've lived in one all your life.

But Milo had a shiny gold present to open, and presents trumped sad trees any day of the week.

This house had survived for many, many years. It had copper pipes that reached down into the earth like roots, its woodwork had taught its stonework how to breathe in exchange for lessons in strength, and the ironwork that chased the eaves and climbed the walls and curled along the windows danced in the sunset.

I always assume people are hiding parts of themselves from each other. People do that.

Well . . . well, yes, I suppose it's very old. Perhaps someone just assumed that since it was an antique, it must be worth something.

Aboard a sailing ship sometime around the War of 1812,

You have to look at a thing long enough for it to really show itself to you ...