Children S Authors

"There is no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"?"

"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: food. The average squirrel cogitation goes something like this: I wonder what there is to eat."

"Her mother called to her. She said, "Where are you going, Flora Belle?" Flora didn't answer her. She never answered her mother when she called her Flora Belle. Sometimes she didn't answer her mother when she called her Flora either."

"Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing."

"When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about."

"And hope is like love... a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing."

"Say it, reader. Say the word "quest" out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn't it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.so trthen despererux died i n heaven and in peace"

"That was the thing about tragedy. It was just sitting there, keeping you company, waiting. And you had absolutely no idea."

"Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted. :("

"Reader, you may ask this question; in fact, you must ask this question: Is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, big-eared mouse to fall in love with a beautiful human princess named Pea? The answer is... yes. Of course, it's ridiculous. Love is ridiculous."

"Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light."

"If the rat had not looked over his shoulder, perhaps his heart would not have broken. And it is possible, then, that I would not have a story to tell. But, reader, he did look."

"Despereaux did not know it, but he would need, very soon, to be brave himself."

"There is those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves is a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman."

"Anything could happen. Together, she and Ulysses could change the world. Or something."

"The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story."

"Despereaux looked down at the book, and something remarkable happened. The marks on the pages, the "squiggles" as Merlot referred to them, arranged themselves into shapes. The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time"

"You can do it! You believe! Feel it in your gizzard. You are a creature of flight. Fly, my children. Fly!"

"I have redeemed myself by giving belief to the wings of the young. Blessed are those who believe, for indeed they shall fly."

"[After discovering Soren's former home is abandoned] Then Twilight spoke, "Soren, they're gone. Maybe something happened to them. You shouldn't take it personally. Buck up now, old buddy." "Personally? What do you know, Twilight, that is personal about any family? You've never had a family. Remember, you're always telling us about how much you learned in your own orphan school of tough learning. You don't know the feel of a mother's down. You don't know what it's like to hear stories from a father, or to hear him sing. Do you know what a psalm is, Twilight? I bet you don't. Well, we Barn Owls know about psalms and books and the feeling of down." Twilight's feathers had ruffled up, spiky with ice crystals. He looked fearsome. "I'll tell you what I know, you miserable little owl. The whole world is my family. I know the softness of a fox's fur, and the strange green light that comes into their eyes during the spring moons. I know how to fish because I learned from an eagle. And when meat is scarce I know how to find the ripest part of a rotten tree and peck the juiciest bugs from it. I know plenty.""

"Oh, if only I were perfectly moon blinked [hypnotized]. If only I were..."

"Gylfie felt that the moment was right. "You are the last owl in the world that I would ever say lacked humility, 12-8. You are for my friend and myself a perfect example of humility. You are beyond humbleness! You are ..." Gylfie was madly searching for a word. What's she going to say next? Soren couldn't imagine. He had never seen such a demonstration of outrageous fawning. "You are subglaucious." 12-8 blinked at the word as did Soren, who had no idea what subglaucious meant. "We, my friend and I, only wish that we could serve in the eggorium and thus attain such humbleness as yourself." "Your words are kind, 25-2. I shall hope that they might encourage me in my continuing quest for humility while in service to a great cause." She wandered off looking a tad more moon blinked than before, if that was possible. "What in Glaux's name is subglaucious?" Soran said as soon as she was out of earshot. "No idea. I made it up.""

"Bye-bye," Auntie cooed, and waved a tattered wing. "Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool!"

"Gylfie turned to Digger and spoke, "Come with us, Digger." "But where is it you're going?" he asked. "To the Great Ga'Hoole Tree." "What?" said Digger, but before Twilight could answer, Streak broke in. "I've heard of that place, but isn't it just a story, a legend?" "To some it might be," Twilight said, and blinked at the eagle. But not to owls, thought Soren. To owls, he thought, it is a real place."

"Gylfie looked at Soren gravely. "That is why we must learn how to fly before the next newing." "But I won't be ready. I won't have enough feathers," Soren said. "Almost, though." "Almost? There's a difference, Gylfie, between almost and enough." "Yes. The difference is belief, Soren. Belief.""

""You just hatched out two weeks ago." Kludd turned to Soren, his younger brother. "What do you know about sisters?" Maybe, Soren thought to himself, they would be better than brothers."

"Once upon a very long time ago, in the time of Glaux, there was an order of knightly owls, from a kingdom called Ga'Hoole, who would rise up each night and perform noble deeds. They spoke no words but true ones, their purpose was to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud, and make powerless those who abused the frail. With hearts sublime they would take flight..."

""I don't really know what happened. I just fell out of the nest." But the second Soren said those words he felt a weird queasiness. He almost knew. He just couldn't quite remember, but he almost knew how it had happened, and he felt a mixture of dread and shame creep through him. He felt something terrible deep in his gizzard."

"I think, How clever time works, overlapping people's lives at certain stages, and as some eyes are waking up, others are already closing, securing the continuity of the world. My mother and I were connected for twelve years. She also lived during a time I didn't exist. And I, in turn, must now keep living when she does not. And yet my father, who still shares the same wheel of time, is more like my parallel line."

"I know what he means: the taste of language that is only spoken and never written because the speaker most likely doesn't read or write. My father has it, too."

"Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila"

"In high school the approaching graduation was stirring up excitement among the seniors. I didn't care much for any of it since I couldn't afford any of the mementoes or activities offered for completing the four years. I had not attended the prom or the senior trip, had not purchased a class ring or letterman's jacket or the yearbook—had not even taken my senior portrait—and I wasn't about to attend the ceremony we had been rehearsing all week."

"I sought out clandestine affairs of my own, which wasn't hard in a Mexican community, where it's possible to be a fag and not a fag. Men satisfy their urges secretly, confident that their public sexuality displaces any suspicion or speculation about their private one."

"I had flings with married men or men with girlfriends, with men who had children, sometimes as old as I was. They went to church on Sunday, drank beer, and eyed the teenage girls in gym shorts. They appreciated a good woman-on-woman porno. They showed me photographs of their fiancées and sent me wedding invitations."

"My four years of high school were spent locked up inside “el campo.” I became a voracious reader and television-watcher, keeping to myself at such alarming extremes that I became invisible. My invisibility provided the perfect protection against harm of any sort. I walked to and from school past the gangsters as silently as a breeze, so disassociated from their tattoos and lingo that even they couldn't find a place for me in their lines of vision."

"After a while the other students in class began to notice I had become Ms. Burnett's favorite, but no one resented me for it. I was the shy, quiet kid in the back who had arrived from México a few years before and who turned out to be an accomplished speller. I became the school Spelling Bee champion, beating out the eighth graders as well, with the word “lapidary.”"

"Most memorable was the day before the mass, at confession."

"Their beloved priest must now wander for all eternity chained to this earthly purgatory—a warning to all that God forgives only that which is confessed to Him through true repentance and atonement. I walked down the church steps, keeping my secret stitched to my tongue. After the ceremony I would have no one to answer for my yearnings but myself, even if after my death I would have to lag behind that priest until the end of days, a pair of branded souls dragging the heavy burdens of their sins, like cows roaming the foggiest dawns, the first guiding the second with its dangling rosary of a tail."

"What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you have to say?"

"He knew what she'd be reading first as she started from the beginning, reading what he'd had to say when he was younger, and then growing older, stories at first about tiny mice who lived in families in back of the wall, and stories about school, and apartments in Greenpoint and Carnasie and Flatbush, elves in Ireland that he'd pictured as Pop had told him about them, and the woman with lace on her sleeves. She kept turning pages, and then halfway through, she whispered, "Water Street." Thomas knew she was reading now about a boy who listened at a register, thinking about a family, and a lighthouse, and then she turned the next page and took a breath. It was the story he really wanted her to see: a story about a girl who though less of herself than everyone else did, who worried about everyone, even when she didn't want to, even when it made her irritable. A girl who was afraid, and who hardly knew it yet, but was on her way to being a healer like her mother, because there'd never be anything else for her, and how lucky they were just to know her."

"She wanted to put her head down on her knees and close her eyes. She felt the way she had years ago when she'd tumbled down the stairs and had the wind knocked out of her: a pain in the chest and stomach so strong it was hard to breathe."

"She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The body was burning with fever. But alive. Alive!"

"The girl's mouth was chapped, tight and pinched, her skin dry. Mama would say she looked woebegone, but as Bird looked at her eyes, the word she thought of was desperate."

"What had it been like the first time Da tried to read the same page? She could almost see his finger under each word, the whisper of his voice as he sounded out the words to himself. How had he ever done that? It seemed impossible."

"How different everyone looked. How louldly they talked about who was starting work tomorrow, who would start in a week, while Sister Raymond sat at her desk looking serene. Bird felt a lurch in her chest. Of all of them, she though, she might be the one who'd miss school the most."

"He was laughing again. What was it about Bird that made him do that?"

"No one in the world like my sister Birdie."

"Sometimes in life you have to do the hardest things to get somewhere—to change your life."

"Leave it to Annie. She knew everything."

"But what gave him the most satisfaction was going back through the pages to read about his first story appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. That afternoon he'd bought Bird the largest bag of lemon drops he could find. "He gives her candy," she had said, remembering too."