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Tell me who you are. You need not tell me your name. Names have power, even human ones. Tell me where you live and what you do with your living.

Robin McKinley

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Robin McKinley
Age: 71
Born: 1952
Born: November 16
Author
Novelist
Writer
Warren
Ohio
Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley
Tell
Power
Live
Human
Humans
Ones
Need
Name
Needs
Names
Even
Living

More quotes by Robin McKinley

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But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.
Robin McKinley
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The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.
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What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing--a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?
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What was new was the fact that, despite my heart doing its fight-or-flight, help-we're-prey-and-HEY-STUPID-THAT'S-A-VAMPIRE number, I was glad to see him. Ridiculous but true. Scary but true.
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Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.
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It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)
Robin McKinley
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Can't all beasts be tamed?
Robin McKinley
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It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.
Robin McKinley
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...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
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Your attitude is perhaps a little unnecessarily rigorous, suggested Jack.
Robin McKinley
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My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily, he said. You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval. I stared at him. You made a *joke*. I have heard this kind of thing may happen.
Robin McKinley
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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
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He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.
Robin McKinley
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Then marry me. For I love you, and I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart.
Robin McKinley
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One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.
Robin McKinley
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Beauty: You called me beautiful last night. Beast: You do not believe me then? Beauty: Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise. Beast: You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?
Robin McKinley
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Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.
Robin McKinley
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Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.
Robin McKinley
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But the world turns, and even legends change and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.
Robin McKinley
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Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you. Can I trust him? What do I have to lose?
Robin McKinley