Patrick Ness Quotes

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Patrick Ness

Profession : Author

Birth : October 17, 1971

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

Patrick Ness

The best characters in books are always the difficult ones, and why would you want to fall in love with someone difficult? The ones I'd fall in love with are the ones I'd definitely keep out of a book.

Patrick Ness

I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.

Patrick Ness

Anything that anybody wants to give me is great! I've had folk songs, heavy metal songs, jewellery... I would never call anything any fan gives me weird, as it's how people express what they like about the books, what it means to them, and that's a wonderful thing.

Patrick Ness

I like writing for teenagers because they're not snobs.

Patrick Ness

I write 1,000-1,500 words. The next day, I rewrite it and add 1,000-1,500 words to the end of it.

Patrick Ness

I like writers who seem to write because they have to. You get the feeling of this burning desire to tell a story. I find it in Peter Carey, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith and David Foster Wallace.

Patrick Ness

I meet blind and partially-sighted young readers all the time, and it's a shock that so few books are available to them.

Patrick Ness

No one wants to read an apologetic book.

Patrick Ness

I think the reason teenage fiction is so popular with adults is that adults hunger for narrative just as badly as teenagers do.

Patrick Ness

If I sit down to write a young-adult novel, then I'm going to write either to the punch-pulling expectation of what I can't do, or I'm going to go the other way and think about what can I sneak in to be 'down with the kids' - which would be excruciating.

Patrick Ness

If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.

Patrick Ness

If you're 15 and you tell someone a secret, they can put it up on Facebook. If you make a mistake, someone films it on their mobile and puts it up on YouTube. When you're 15, you deserve privacy.

Patrick Ness

Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that's working, I can just let it go and do all the stuff that I love - 'Trojan horse' it. There are so many great YA heroines, and that's fantastic, but what about the emotionally complex boy out there? That's who I tend to write about.

Patrick Ness

I don't purposely push the boundaries... I think if you pay attention to a story, it will have exactly as much 'difficult material' as it needs, and nobody will complain about it because you've earnt it.

Patrick Ness

The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that that's always the truth.

Patrick Ness