The world is cynical and sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean that that’s always the truth. Patrick Ness Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
How you leave the reader is so important – not the climax; I call it the ‘exit feeling’. Patrick Ness Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
