Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.
I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how.
It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.
What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.
Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.
I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.
If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?
Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.
Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?
I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.
Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.
I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.
We book people are always preaching about reading aloud to children, but unless you do, you can't realize how it enriches family life.
I love writing for young adults because they are such a wonderful audience, they are good readers, and they care about the books they read.
It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment.
We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story.
As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.
I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write.
The world that is in me is the only world I have by which to grasp the world outside and as I write fiction, it is the chart by which I must steer.
...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.
All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a healing quality - a quality that enlarges our human spirits.
Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious.
As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.
One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.
It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.
I like to write about a lot of things, which is why my books are different. This is probably why I don't like to write sequels, but chiefly I like to write about people.
Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.
I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.
I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.
We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves.
If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.
I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.
Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn.
The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.
The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.
Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.
When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.
The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.
That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.
Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.
The work reveals the creator - and as our universe in its vastness, its orderliness, its exquisite detail, tells us something of the One who made it, so a work of fiction, for better or worse, will reveal the writer.
Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable."
He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.
More than fifty years ago Sputnik dramatically raised the nation's awareness of what was lacking in science and math education in America. What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good.
Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.