Marcus Sedgwick > Quotes

“If a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Midwinterblood

“There's always a third choice in life. Even if you think you're stuck between two impossible choices, there's always a third way. You just have to look for it.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Revolver

“A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.”
― Marcus Sedgwick

“If I were dead, I wouldn't be sad, and I wouldn't be glad, because I wouldn't be.”
― Marcus Sedgwick

“I'm just a girl in a nurse's uniform, but that doesn't mean I know how to save these men, and they- they are men in uniforms, but that doesn't mean they know how to die.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Foreshadowing

“There never was a story that was happy through and through.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Blood Red, Snow White

“He wonders if a few moments of utter and total joy can be worth a lifetime of struggle.

Maybe, he thinks. Maybe, if they're the right moments.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Midwinterblood

“You will never find it," his ghost says. "What?" "What you are looking for. You want to go back to the start. You want to go back to where you began. You want to find the happiness you once had. But you can never get there, because even if you somehow found it, you yourself would be different. You would have changed, from your journey alone, from the passing of time, if nothing else. You can never make it back to where you began, you can only ever climb another turn of the spiral stair. Forever.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“People think I have so much faith in myself, but I have none. I have no faith in myself, or in what I can do, and yet people think I can do anything I want.
That's how I seem, but it's an illusion. It's an act, nothing more.”
― marcus sedgwick, She Is Not Invisible

“Eric Seven does not believe in love at first sight.

He corrects himself.

Even in that moment, the moment that it happens, he fees his journalist’s brain make a correction, rubbing out a long-held belief, writing a new one in its place.

He did not believe in love at first sight. He thinks he might do so now.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Midwinterblood

“I might have been normal but if I was I cannot remember that time.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, White Crow

“And if I really can see the future, then what does it mean? Is there any sense in our lives if everything is already out there, just waiting to happen? For if that were so, then life would be a horrible monster indeed, with no chance of escape from fate, from destiny. It would be like reading a book, but reading it backwards, from the final chapter down to chapter one, so that the end is already known to you.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Foreshadowing

“How do you find a name?"
"In this case, on a shampoo bottle. It's one of the ingredients; Sodium Laureth Sulphate. He thought it was a beautiful word and sounded like a name."
"He's right."
"Mum didn't think so. He swears he told her at the time where it came from, and maybe he did, but she was too ill to remember. I was seven when she found out, and then she hit the roof. 'You named our daughter after a chemical!' That kind of thing."
"I still think it's a cool name," said Sam, and I could hear the smile in his voice. It was a soft voice, too. I liked it.
"And very beautiful," he added.
"Thank you," I said, feeling a little warm inside.
"And that's why I have such a boring name," said Benjamin.
"Oh, hey," said Sam. "That's a cool name, too."
"No, it's not," said Benjamin. "There are two Bens in my class. Mum said she was going to choose my name when I was born. Dad wasn't allowed. So I got a boring name. But that's why Stan's called Stan."
"Because you wanted him to have a boring name, too?"
"Stan's not a boring name. It's short for Stannous."
"Stannous?"
"Stannous Chloride," I said. "It's a chemical. It was on a tube of toothpaste."
Sam laughed.
"Mum hit the roof," said Benjamin, proudly.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, She Is Not Invisible

“I am scared almost all the time. But I never tell anyone. I can't afford to. I have to go on pretending I'm this confident person, because if I don't, if I'm quiet, I become invisible.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, She Is Not Invisible

“to be remembered in the heart of a loved one is to live forever”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“It is a wall that is being built. And these are the bricks in the wall: the drug gangs, the police of Mexico and of America, MIGRA, the DEA, the governments and politicians of these two countries. Then there are the biggest bricks of all. Companies; these giant corporations that are more powerful than anything, more powerful even than the countries where they operate. The maquiladoras here; they pay no taxes. None. They pay wages so low that even a job still means living on the poverty line. ¿And why does this happen? Our leaders; they tell us that this capitalism of theirs will save the world; that it will create jobs so that everyone will get richer. ¡It’s a lie! ¿How can there be a consumer society when its workers do not earn enough to consume anything?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Saint Death

“Even the dead tell stories.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Revolver

“To see yourself on camera is not a natural thing, a thing no normal person is comfortable with; for it shows us as others see us, not as who we believe we really are.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world-- the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley-- ...I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially because now it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What's Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“He had learned something already in the course of his journey. If you carried a closed wooden box, people want to know what is in it.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Blood Red, Snow White

“Edward looks wistfully at Mat, and while the girls are pretty, Nancy particularly, it is Mat who thinks about the most, because he wished he'd been more like Mat when he was young.

If he'd been more like Mat, more confident, maybe he wouldn’t have missed his chances in life, chances that sometimes only came along once. Sometimes there are single moments, he thinks, where your path divides, your life can go one way, so very different from another. Work out well, rather than be a failure. And if you miss those chances, he thinks, well, is that it?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Midwinterblood

“It was like a new kind of vision, seeing with eyes as keen as scalpel blades, that cut away desires and emotions and wishful thinking and left only what was fact.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Dark Flight Down

“Eirikr lies on the table, staring into the night sky, staring at the uncountable stars that are shining brightly down on him.

What lives, he thinks, are lived by the men up there?

What do they do?

What do they believe?

What do they see?

Do they see me?

He wonder about them all, all the many lives that have been, and that will be, and wonders why they are not all the same, why they are what they are. It cannot be, he thinks, that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely?

That we are not just one, but a multitude.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Midwinterblood

“Love, sing, cry, and fight, but all the time, seek to know everything you can about the earth upon which you stand, till your time is done.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Revolver

“The first thought was this: that he was a foolish old man, because all his life he'd been looking for something and it was only when Anna joined him in the bar that evening that he realized that home is not something you find outside yourself; home is something you carry inside you, and it's made from the memories of the people you love, and the people who have loved you.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Revolver

“It is enough to know that not to know is enough.
It is enough not to know.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“One final time I told myself I wasn't abducting my little brother.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, She Is Not Invisible

“If. The smallest word, which raises the biggest questions.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, Revolver

“...people burn books, and that they ban books is, in a way, a good sign. It's a good sign because it means books have power. When people burn books, it's because they're afraid of what's inside them...”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“If what we make comes back to haunt us , to define us and alter us, well, then, hadn't we better be very careful what we create?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve