Cee Brensan: Quotes from Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

Bookish Mardi : Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

"What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die."

- Ransom Riggs

Book Summary

After fleeing in a boat from the hollows the children are caught up in a bad storm and need to find a land. They land on a beach only to find out that the wights had followed them and they flee into the forests of mainland. With nowhere to tun they discover a loop with the help of their book " The Tales of the Peculiar" and escape into a loop full of peculiar animals. After learning that Miss Wren, the animal's ymbryne, had flown to England to help her sister ymbrynes, they leave in search of her.

Along the roads they become stowaways on a passing cart, becoming friends of a traveling bands of Gypsies who help them elude the searching wights until they are all captured trying to board the train to London. They are held by the wights in a small shed until one of the children's peculiarities rescues the group from the certain death.

In the city they see horrible things left by the bombing as they search for Miss Wren's peculiar pigeon. They manage to make it to Saint Paul's Cathedral where they follow her pigeons in an underground crypt where they find two peculiar children named Joel and Peter who are echolocators and seem to share one mind. The lead them to a loop and only Emma, Jacob, and Horace enter following the flutter of pigeons wings up to the attic where they meet Melina Manon, a peculiar gifted with Telekinesis, who distrusts them but begs to travel with them bringing the pigeon that they believe will lead them to Miss Wren. (Source: Wikipedia)

Remarkable Lines from the Book

Inferno by Dante Alighieri'

"Just because they knew it was lost didn't mean they knew how to let go." - Jacob

". . .your talent can be developed." - Millard

"Peculiarities are a bit like muscles - the more you exercise them, the bigger they grew." - Millard

"Destiny if for people in books." - Jacob

"What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You're here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die." - Emma

"If my body was cold in the night mist, I didn't feel it. If the sea roared in my ears, I didn't hear it. If the rock I sat on was sharp and jagged, I hardly noticed. Everything outside the two of us was`a distraction." - Jacob

"Peculiar creatures must roam around to be happy." - Bronwyn

"Some truths are expressed bet in the form of myth." - Addison

"I'd become a mystery they would never solve. A wound that would never heal." - Jacob

"Everything happens for a reason." - Jacob

"It's not about destiny but I do think there's balance in the world, and sometimes forces we don't understand intervene to tip the scales the right way." - Jacob

"There's no need to cry over milk that hasn't even spilled yet." - Jacob

"There are many strangers wandering the roads these days - people who aren't what they appeasr to be." - Bekhir

"If I'd kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?" - Jacob

". . .peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance." - Jacob

"At the heart of nature's mystery lies another mystery." - Perplexus Anomalous

"Every peculiar had struggled through a period of painful uncertainty. Every peculiar had been tried." - Jacob

"There was less glory in running away from a fight." - Jacob

"There are many answers to be found within, if you only know what to look for." - Bronwyn

"The past can't be changed." - Millard

"I envied the blind brothers, navigating a mercifully detail-free topography; the world in wireframe. I wondered briefly, what their dreams looked like - or if they dreamt at all." - Jacob

"Their deaths had been written into histoy. Even if we'd saved their lives today, something else would've taken them tomorrow. Another bomb. A car crash. They were of the past, and the past always mends itself, no matter how we interfere." - Millard

"History heals itself." - Enoch

"Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human." - Jacob

"You may choose to live in a world of fantasy if you like." - Enoch

"From the mouths of our elderly comes a fountain of wisdom." - Millard

". . . is my best reason for staying in peculiardom didn't want me anymore, I wouldn't debase myself by clinging to her. I had my pride." - Jacob

"I was not nearly as ordinary as I used to be - or if it was true that I'd never been ordinary, now I knew it. I had changed. And that, at least, gave me some hope: That even under ordinary circumstances, I still fins a way to live an extraordinary life." - Jacob

"Peculiarness is determined by genes, not geography." - Millard

". . . let the world keep a litt;e of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret." - Jacob

"Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder." - Jacob

Emma: Asking you to leave was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I'm glad you came around. I don't think I'd have had the strength to ask again.
Jacob: I wish there were a world where we could be together in peace.