Quote

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

Robin McKinley

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Robin McKinley
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: November 16
Author
Novelist
Writer
Warren
Ohio
Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley
Position
Climb
Bits
Climbs
Oyster
Doesn
Grain
Oysters
Become
Floor
Pearl
Ever
Sand
Shell
Take
Ocean
Pearls
Like
Asked
Shells
Gets
Quietly

More quotes by Robin McKinley

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I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on.
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Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true. —Luthe
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Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you
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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.
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I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.
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it goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.
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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.
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All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.
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My capacity for invention is flash hot stark, I thought. Sucker sunshade. Disembodied radar-reconnaissance. Not to mention Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras. Pity about the rest of me.
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What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.
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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?
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Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.
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Mice are terribly chatty. They will chat about anything, and if there is nothing to chat about, they will chat about having nothing to chat about. Compared to mice, robins are reserved.
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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.)
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Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.
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It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.
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Your attitude is perhaps a little unnecessarily rigorous, suggested Jack.
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She fell asleep, leaning on his chest, and he edged her a little off a particularly painful bruise, leaned his head back against the tree he had propped them up against, and closed his own eyes.
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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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He grunted she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills.
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