Hermit’s-Can I say? It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.

— Patrick Ness

He's seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them, all of those seemingly endless possibilities, not fictional, but real, out there, existing, right now. There is so much more out there than just the world he knows, so much more than his tiny Washington town, so much more than even London. Or England. Or hell, for that matter. So much more that he'll never see. So much more that he'll never get to. So much that he can only glimpse enough of to know that it's forever beyond his reach.

— Patrick Ness

His absence is so big it's like he's there.

— Patrick Ness

His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still-See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him, how strong after all that illness, and how he wants to just lightly touch my neck, just there, and how he wants to take me in his arms and-"Oh, God," he says, looking away suddenly. "Viola, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"But I just put my hand to the back of his neck-And he says, "Viola-?" And I pull myself towards him-And I kiss him. And it feels like, finally.

— Patrick Ness

Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world, and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

— Patrick Ness

I couldn't stand the waiting anymore. I couldn't stand how alone it made me feel." And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her. And the nightmare began. The nightmare that always ended with -"I let her go," Conor choked out. "I could have held on, but I let her go." And that, the monster said, is the truth." I didn't mean it, though!" Conor said, his voice rising. "I didn't mean to let her go! And now it's for real! Now she's going to die and it's my fault!" And that, the monster said, is not the truth at all.

— Patrick Ness

I don't believe in guardian angels," Regine says seriously. "Just people who are there for you and people who aren't.

— Patrick Ness

I don't want to die. I want to live. Furthermore, I want to live long enough so I can really live.

— Patrick Ness

If war is hard - and it is, forever and always - then after war is just as hard, differently.

— Patrick Ness

If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.

— Patrick Ness