Quotes

I love quotes. I use them to inspire my writing, and when I taught school I had them all over my classroom. Then, if I found myself with an extra few minutes of class time, I would pick a quote and have the kids write what it meant to them. Here are some favorites.

• “The writer after all is only half the book, the other half is the reader.” -Lois Lowry

• “This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.”  -Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs

• “If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven’t closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth”. -Madeleine L’Engle

• “A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.” -Jerry Seinfeld

• “A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is now people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.” -Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

• “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”  -Groucho Marx

• “Perhaps,” said the man, “you would like to be lost with us. I have found it much more agreeable to be lost in the company of others.” -Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

• “Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?” -Paul Coelho

• “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” -Ursula LeGuin

• “Except for that, everything’s going great. Well….there’s been a murder and we’re out of soup.” -Sheila Turnage, Three Times Lucky

• “Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, grow! Grow!” -Talmud

• “In order for stories to work — for kids and for adults — they should scare. And you should triumph. There’s no point in triumphing over evil if the evil isn’t scary.” -Neil Gaiman

• “Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.” -Stephane Mallarme

• “There were times in school when a person had to do things fast, cheap, and without character.” -E.L. Konigsburg

• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou

• “Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” – Jules Renard

• “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” -Alan Bennett

• “Sometimes a perfect memory can be ruined if put to words.” -Nova Ren Suma, Imaginary Girls

• “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

• “I’m an introvert… I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.” -Audrey Hepburn

• “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” -Chinese Proverb

Quotes about the future that I used for SPIRIT’S KEY’s inspiration:

• “The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.” -Bill Cosby

• “Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.” -Horace

• “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life”.- Thomas Jefferson

• “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”- Albert Einstein

• “There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.” – Oscar Wilde

 

     

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