Katherine Rundell Quotes

Humans, on the whole, Feo could take or leave; there was only one person she loved properly, with the sort of fierce pride that gets people into trouble, or prison, or history books.

You shouldn't say what you don't mean

God could arrest you for this,' said Sergei. 'This is better than murder.

To throw the knife would be death...She wanted nothing to do with death--nothing to do with finality, with endings, with the dark of it. She hated the man more than she hated any living thing, but he was living.

You look as though you own a minimum of one pony.

Oh.' A syllable can express a great deal. Will's sounded of resignation but also of swear words, and the smell of rotting vegetation, and wary amusement and bitten fingernails.

He'd intended it to sound reassuring, but instead his voice had landed somewhere between "desperate lying" and "stern aunt on a deathbed.

He was not tall or broad, but when he grinned it was so vivid that he appeared to take up most of the street and at least half the sky.

People say we can't do anything about the way the world is; they say it's set in stone. I say it looks like stone, but it's mostly paint and cardboard.

And what is love at first sight but recognition?

Quite suddenly Sophie couldn't bear it. She pelted up to her bedroom, tripping over the stairs. The tears in her eyes were making the world blur... She stamped and kicked...

It took her some minutes to realize that Charles was standing in the doorway... 'This calls for hot water... Get in the tub, Sophie, and do some splashing. You will be surprised at what a difference splashing can make.

But make sure the risks you take aren't taken to impress someone else.

Only weak thinkers do not love the sky.

The baby was almost certainly one year old. They knew this because of the red rosette pinned to her front, which read, 1!
"Or rather," said Charles Maxim, "the child is either one year old or she has come first in a competition. I believe babies are rarely keen participants in competitive sport. Shall we therefore assume it is the former?

Her face was built on the blueprint used for snow leopards and saints.

Sometimes it seemed difficult for the adults in Sophie's life to tell between 'carried away' and 'absolutely correct but unbelieved.

I know these sorts of people. They're not men. They're mustaches with idiots attached.

A beetle lumbered up onto her arm, and she stilled herself, enjoying the tickling feeling of its thread-thin feet. It was deep green with shimmers of blue and turquoise, with pitch-black legs. She kissed it very softly. If happiness were a color, it would be the color of this beetle, thought Wil.

I don't know where courage comes from. But I do know that if you can scrape together just a bit, more of it comes without your trying... So you don't need a great lump of bravery: only a tiny breath of it.

I still find libraries astonishing; I still think they speak to our better instincts. The library remains one of the few places in the world where you don't have to buy anything, know anyone or believe anything to enter in.

It's like eight thousand birds, Charles! Charles! Isn't it like eight thousand birds?

I think, actually, everyone starts out with some strange in them. It's just whether or not you decide to keep it.

Wolves, like children, are not born to lead calm lives.

The set of her chin suggested she might have slain a dragon before breakfast. The look in her eyes suggested she might, in fact, have eaten it. The

Children's novels...spoke and still speak of hope. They say: look, this is what bravery looks like. This is what generosity looks like. They tell me, through the medium of wizards and lions and talking spiders, that this world we live in is a world of people who tell jokes and work and endure. Children's books say: the world is huge. They say: hope counts for something. They say: bravery will matter, wit will matter, empathy will matter, love will matter. These things may or may not be true. I do not know. I hope they are.

To the three men in gray coats and golden buttons just cresting the hill, the pantomime was a strange one. The speck of green merged with the gray, and the black with the flash of red, as they shot off toward north.

It's like they've forgotten everything important, isn't it? I mean, forgotten things like cats and dancing exist.

But those coins are wishes! You're stealing other people's wishes!"
The look Matteo gave her was so flinty, she could have chipped a tooth on it. "If you have money to waste on wishes, you don't need the wishes as badly as I need the money.

But the writing we call children's fiction is not a childish thing: childish things include picking your nose and eating the contents, and tantruming at the failure to get your own way. The 45th President of America is childish. Children's fiction has childhood at its heart, which is not the same thing.

Wolves are the witches of the animal world.

It's inhuman to take your books away before you know the end.

Stories can start revolutions.

It was never too late, she said, to turn a living thing around, and a garden was the most living of things.

There were, in Feo's experience, five kinds of cold. There was wind cold, which Feo barely felt. It was fussy and loud and turned your cheeks as red as if you'd been slapped, but couldn't kill you even if it tried. There was snow cold, which plucked at your arms and chapped your lips, but brought real rewards. It was Feo's favorite weather: The snow was soft and good for making snow wolves. There was ice cold, which might take the skin off your palm if you let it, but probably wouldn't if you were careful. Ice cold smelled sharp and knowing. It often came with blue skies and was good for skating. Feo had respect for ice cold. Then there was hard cold, which was when the ice cold got deeper and deeper until at the end of a month you couldn't remember if the summer had ever really existed. Hard cold could be cruel. Birds died in midflight. It was the kind of cold that you booted and kicked your way through.
And then there was blind cold. Blind cold smelled of metal and granite. It took all the sense out of your brain and blew the snow into your eyes until they were glued shut and you had to rub spit into them before they would blink. Blind cold was forty degrees below zero. This was the kind of cold that you didn't sit down to think in, unless you wanted to be found dead in the same place in May or June.
Feo had felt blind cold only once.

Never ignore a possible. ~Charles

But even airplanes heading toward Belgium can work magic, if you have luck and love and Christmas on your side.

Wolves, and stars, and snow: Those things made sense.

Perhaps, she thought, that's what love does. It's not there to make you feel special. It's to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, she thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie - two words for the same thing.

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.

It's best not to get too hungry if you can avoid it. If you get hungry enough, you will start feeling that your bad ideas are your good idea. If you get truly famished, you'll start feeling like a French philosopher, and that's unwise.

Governments can do both great and stupid things.

Feo wished she could explain - that the beauty of the world is itself a kind of company, and they lived in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. 'You can make the snow a kind of friend, if you know how.

Adults are taught not to believe anything unless it is boring or ugly.

Cowardice is for cowards. Fear is for people with brains and eyes and functioning nerve endings.

I do, I'm afraid, understand books far more readily than I understand people. Books are so easy to get along with.

Let me introduce you. Sophie, this is Miss Eliot, from the National Childcare Agency. Miss Eliot, this is Sophie, from the ocean.

Hard work always hurts somewhere.