Cressida Cowell quotes:

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic...

Hiccup: Thank You For Nothing You Stupid Reptile.

History is a set of repeating circles, like the tide. The wind does blow through the ruins of tomorrow. But it is more a question of two steps forward, one step back. Humans and dragons make the same mistakes, again and again, but things do get better over time

I wanted to be a King who would found a New World, not in some misty country far across the seas, but right here, right now, at home.

Twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death

Books were despised by the Viking Tribes, as they were seen as a horrible civilizing influence and a threat to the barbarian culture.

But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.

I was not a natural. . . . This is the story of becoming . . . the Hard Way.

A Chief must show no fear, no worry... A Chief is a leader first, and a man second...

But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages.

Oh, for Thor's sake..." said Hiccup. "I thought that was just a story..." "Stories come from somewhere," said the witch. "The past haunts the present in more ways than we realise.

That is a terrible plan." "Hiccup's plans are always t-terrible." "Hey! You're still here, aren't you?

We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time.

Remember, there is nothing wrong with a healthy sense of self-respect.

Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak. Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.

Most of us are lucky not to be Kings and Heroes, because we do not have to make the choices that Kings and Heroes have to make.

And now that its ruby eyes are set into the gold, you cannot see their tear-shape, so they seem to be laughing rather than crying. It is a constant reminder to me of the human ability to create something beautiful even when things are at the darkest.

There's no such thing as im-POSSIBLE, Hiccup, only im-PROBABLE. The only thing that limits us are the limits to our imagination

GO FOR HIS EYES! OR BITE HIM ON THE NOSE! DRAGON NOSES ARE VERY SENSITIVE!" Oh, very helpful, Camicazi, very helpful...thought Hiccup. What if he doesn't obligingly hold me up to his nose? What if the only part I get close to is the TEETH?

For a Hero cannot triumph all the time. Sometimes he will be defeated, and how he faces that defeat is a test of his character.

Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters.

The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit. So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong?

There were dragons when I was a boy.

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.

The Hero cares not for a wild winter's storm. For it carries him swift on the back of the storm. All may be lost and our hearts may be worn, but a Hero fights forever.

Always sailing, sailing, sailing...never quite reaching.

Wartihog put up his hand. "What happens if we can't read, sir?" "No boasting, Wartihog!" boomed Gobber. "Get some idiot to read it for you.

The past haunts the present in more ways than we think. It certainly scares the living daylights out of ME"~ Old Wrinkly

The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today.