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 RiggsIf I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.
Ransom RiggsI grew up feeling like a weirdo like many kids do. But I was lucky to find my own home for peculiar children. I went to a school for the gifted in Florida, and it was full of kids who - we were all strange together. And that was a real blessing.
Ransom RiggsBut these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around-they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.
Ransom RiggsIf you are a conscious human being who has opinions about the world, then you will unconsciously put your own perspective into the book.
Ransom RiggsI liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.
Ransom RiggsThere was a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, a brother and sister who could lift boulders over their heads.
Ransom RiggsEvery snapshot collector has obsessions. Some only collect photos of cars. Others like World War II, or babies, or old-timey girls in old-timey swimsuits. I happen to collect the weird stuff: photos that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little. The uncanny.
Ransom RiggsI have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism.
Ransom RiggsSo one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldnโt become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. Iโd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.
Ransom RiggsI own a few thousand snapshots, which is small by the standards of most collectors I know. I generally only buy photos I think I may actually be able to use in a book one day. I need that focus when buying, because without it I'd just buy everything and my house would be overrun with bucket loads of snapshots; there are just too many beautiful images in the world, and I'd need to own them all.
Ransom RiggsI'm no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I'm pretty sure that's flirting
Ransom RiggsI had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.
Ransom RiggsStars, too, were time travelers. How many of these ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
Ransom RiggsLaughing 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.
Ransom RiggsI've never really been interested in the vintage photos people pay lots of money for -- civil war tintypes or old daguerrotypes of famous people. Nor do I have any interest in the really gross, dark stuff that some people pay top-dollar, like post-mortem photos of babies (yuck) or press photos of old murder scenes or whatever. I collect in these little niches most other people don't care about -- dark-and-weird-but-fun -- and photos that have been written on, which a lot of sellers think hurts their value. All of which is good news for me!
Ransom RiggsThere was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.
Ransom RiggsI used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.
Ransom RiggsStrange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.
Ransom RiggsWhenever I try to map things out they inevitably change. Which doesn't mean I don't map them out ย I just try to embrace the better ideas that come along as my fingers are flying around the keyboard mid-draft!
Ransom RiggsSome of my favorite photos from the old days are of people who maybe didn't know how to smile. Maybe smiling in photos wasn't an accepted form of behavior back then. But the big eyes and the oversized dolls that people are carrying, and it's something about their hair - the anachronisms of these photos are really what creep me out.
Ransom RiggsI just like that balance of the real and the fantastical because as a reader and consumer of stories and fantasy, I always want to feel like I can find that world.
Ransom RiggsWhen you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.
Ransom RiggsDo you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid and wish you'd just stayed in bed?
Ransom Riggs