Ransom Riggs Quotes

Consider the simple hedgehog, and his neighbor, the opossum...do they waste their energy trying to throw one another into chasms when they face a common enemy, the winter? No!

I slammed out of the Priest Hole and started walking, heading nowhere in particular. Sometimes you just need to go through a door.

Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.

You may choose to live in a world of fantasy if you like, my dear, but I am a realist.

That was our friendship: equal parts irritation and cooperation.

Do you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid..and wish you'd just stayed in bed?

An air of mystery closed around the details of his early life. I didn't pry. He had been through hell and had a right to his secrets.

To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave— that was magical.

Have they built cities on the moon?" another boy asked hopefully."We left some garbage and a flag there in the sixties, but thats about it.

Millard! Who's the prime minister?""Winston Churchill," he said. "Have you gone daft?""What's the capital of Burma?""Lord, I've no idea. Rangoon?""Good! When's your birthday?""Will you quit shouting and let me bleed in peace!

Which was just well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss.

...so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn't become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

I knew there was something peculiar about you," she said. "And I mean that as the highest compliment." I'd always known I was strange. I never dreamed I was peculiar.

She moved to pinch me again but I blocked her hand. I'm no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I'm pretty sure that's flirting.

They worried that fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical realities.

..he had trampled her poor, pining heart, and the wound was still raw, even these many years later.

Is anything illegal here?' Addison asked.'Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that's just for paperbacks.'There's a library?''Two. Though one won't lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.

Hugh and Fiona stood off to one side, their hands linked and foreheads touching, saying goodbye in their own quiet way. Finally, we'd all finished with Claire and were ready to go, but no one wanted to disturb them, so we stood watching as Fiona pulled away from Hugh, shook a few seeds from her nest of wild hair, and grew a rose bush heavy with red flowers right where they stood. Hugh's bees rushed to pollinate it, and while they were occupied– as if she'd done it just so they could have a moment to themselves– Fiona embraced him and whispered something in his ear, and Hugh nodded and whispered.

I'd never asked what year it was here-1492? 1750?-though to the animals I guess it hardly mattered. This was a safe place apart from the world of people, and only in the world of people did the year make any difference.

They may love you', she whispered, 'but they'll never understand.

I'll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity. - Enoch

If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

Destiny is for people in books about magical swords. It's a lot of crap.

At the heart of nature’s mystery lies another mystery.