The collection / 60 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1952 AD

Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic--which was what all magic was--it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that...might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred.

Robin McKinley / quote

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02c. 1952 AD

What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?

Robin McKinley / quote

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03c. 1952 AD

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself -- but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.)

Robin McKinley / quote

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04c. 1952 AD

[the sheep] sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. "I am sorry, you ugly creature," he said. "I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.

Robin McKinley / quote

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05c. 1952 AD

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.

Robin McKinley / quote

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06c. 1952 AD

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

Robin McKinley / quote

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07c. 1952 AD

It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.

Robin McKinley / quote

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08c. 1952 AD

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

Robin McKinley / quote

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09c. 1952 AD

Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.

Robin McKinley / quote

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10c. 1952 AD

It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.

Robin McKinley / quote

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11c. 1952 AD

I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood... I was raving, if only to myself.

Robin McKinley / quote

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12c. 1952 AD

I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?

Robin McKinley / quote

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13c. 1952 AD

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.

Robin McKinley / quote

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14c. 1952 AD

She thought, I need no cup. I am Chalice. I am filling with the grief and hurt and fear of my demesne; the shattered earthlines weigh me down; I am brimming with the needs of my people.

Robin McKinley / quote

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15c. 1952 AD

...but with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other.

Robin McKinley / quote

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16c. 1952 AD

Vampires do breathe, by the way, but their chests don't move like humans'. Have you ever lain in the arms of your sweetheart and tried to match your breathing to his, or hers? You do it automatically. Your brain only gets involved if your body is having trouble. Fortunately there was nothing about this situation that was like being in the arms of a sweetheart except that I was leaning against someone's naked chest. I could no more have breathed with him than I could have ignited gasoline and shot exhaust out my butt because I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car.

Robin McKinley / quote

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17c. 1952 AD

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?

Robin McKinley / quote

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18c. 1952 AD

She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.

Robin McKinley / quote

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19c. 1952 AD

If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.

Robin McKinley / quote

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20c. 1952 AD

One has various things in the back of one's mind. Occasionally an opportunity presents itself to bring one forward. Most of these opportunities come to nothing. Once in a very great while one -- or two -- do come to something.

Robin McKinley / quote

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21c. 1952 AD

The Pavilion did not burn by lightening," she said.He hesitated again. "It holds the memory of fire," he said at last. "Lightening is young and strong and thoughtless, but it could also wish to visit the site of some particular victory of one of its kind--as a young soldier recently commissioned might visit the scene of some great battle--

Robin McKinley / quote

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22c. 1952 AD

There are always cats around Charlie's, but they are usually refugees seeking asylum from the local rat population, and rather desperately friendly.

Robin McKinley / quote

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23c. 1952 AD

Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.

Robin McKinley / quote

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24c. 1952 AD

How does a hundred-and-eighty-pound man turn into a ninety-pound wolf? Where does the leftover ninety go? Does he park it in the umbrella stand overnight?

Robin McKinley / quote

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