There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.
You can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.
If you have no intention of loving or being loved, the whole journey is pointless.
And hope is like love…a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.
Nothingwould beeasier withoutyou,because youare everything,all of it-sprinkles, quarks, giantdonuts, eggs sunny-side up-youare the ever-expandinguniverseto me.
The world is dark, and light is precious.Come closer, dear reader.You must trust me.I am telling you a story.
Oh, my goodness,” said Louisiana. “I’m just all filled up with feathers and regrets. And fears. I have a lot of fears.
Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.
If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.
Normally, Edward would have found intrusive, clingy behavior of this sort very annoying, but there was something about Sarah Ruth. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do more for her. (page 135)
We forget that the simple gesture of putting a book in someone’s hands can change a life. I want to remind you that it can. I want to thank you because it did. – 2010 Indies Choice Award
Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end…
The sound of the king’s music made Despereaux’s soul grow large and light inside of him.
Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.
Magic is always impossible. It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That’s why it is magic.
There,” she said. She rocked him back and forth. “There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?
She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head. “You’re going to vacuum up that squi
She liked the way the words sounded. She imagined them floating above her in a comic-strip bubble
She might be a natural-born cynic, but she knew the right word when she heard it.
The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart.
It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.
Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.
The April sun, weak but determined, shone through a castle window and from there squeezed itself through a small hole in the wall and placed one golden finger on the little mouse.
And Rob knew then that he had picked the right person to tell.
There was something scary about watching adults sleep. It was as if no one at all were in charge of the world.
This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.
He said, ‘I forgive you, Pa.”And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.
Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103)
Listen, said Beverly. Let me tell you something. There is no Very Friendly Animal Center. That cat is long gone.
It is a horrible, terrible thing, the worst thing, to watch somebody you love die right in front of you and not be able to do nothing about it.
What is?’, he said. ‘What if?’ is a question that belongs to magic.
But that is impossible,” said Peter.”Magic is always impossible,” said the magician. “It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.
He felt a wonderful certainty. The impossible, he thought, the impossible is about to happen again.
Not much goes on in the mind of a squirrel.Huge portions of what is loosely termed “the squirrel brain” are given over to one thought:
Once upon a time,” he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.
Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.
I love your round head,the brilliant green,the watching blue,these letters,this world, you.I am very, very hungry.
There ain’t no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
He was agitated for some reason that he could not name. (page 35)
It occurred to her that nobody really knew what anybody else was upset about, and that seemed like a terrible thing.
He would write and write. He would make wonderful things happen. Some of it would be true. All of it would be true. Most of it would be true.
Desperaux,” she said. He saw his name on her lips.”I honor you,” whispered Desperaux. “I honor you.
You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.
It’s hard not to immediately fall in love witha dog who has a good sense of humor.
If the wishes came true, they came true in terrible ways. Wishes were dangerous things. That was the idea you got from fairy tales.
No one cared what she wanted. No one had ever cared. And perhaps, worst of all, no one ever would care.
Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl?The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.
He knew how to construct a song out of the nothing of day-to-day life and how to sing that nothing into a song so beautiful that it could sustain the vision of a whole and better world.