"He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry. [...] She wouldn't laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something he could be proud of."

"(Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?) Katherine Paterson’s books — which were almost traumatizing to me as a kid, but which I appreciate now for challenging me and my worldview."

"Even a prince may be a fool"

"She just took off running to the old Perkins place. He couldn't help turning to watch. She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn. So smooth. The word "beautiful" came to his mind, but he shook it away and hurried up to his house."

"He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so. He did not have to make any announcement to Leslie that he had changed his mind about her. She already knew it."

"There's a Polar Bear In our Frigidaire - He likes it 'cause it's cold in there."

"Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy."

"How do you do! My name is Sue! Now you gonna die!"

"Rollin' Stone, Wanna see my picture on the cover. Wanna buy five copies for my mother [Yeah!] Wanna see my smilin' face, on the cover, The cover of the Rollin Stone."

"If you have to dry the dishes (Such an awful boring chore) If you have to dry the dishes ('Stead of going to the store) If you have to dry the dishes And you drop one on the floor Maybe they won't let you Dry the dishes anymore"

"When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?"

"Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understand each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed."

"Do not despair For Johnny-head-in-air; He sleeps as sound As Johnny underground."

"We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies."

"Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it."

"You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat."

"The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses."

"The GEM and MAGNET are sister-papers (characters out of one paper frequently appear in the other), and were both started more than thirty years ago. At that time, together with Chums and the old B[oy’s] O[wn] P[aper], they were the leading papers for boys, and they remained dominant till quite recently. Each of them carries every week a fifteen — or twenty-thousand-word school story, complete in itself, but usually more or less connected with the story of the week before. The Gem in addition to its school story carries one or more adventure serial. Otherwise the two papers are so much alike that they can be treated as one, though the MAGNET has always been the better known of the two, probably because it possesses a really first-rate character in the fat boy. Billy Bunter."

"The chief thing was to select a name totally different from those under which he had hitherto written: so that when he used the name, he would feel like a different person, and in consequence write from a somewhat different angle. I have been told - by men who do not write - that this is all fanciful. This only means that they don't understand."

"The business of a boys' author is not to consider political issues, but to entertain the readers, make them as happy as possible."

"If there is a Tchekov among my readers, I fervently hope that the effects of the Magnet wil be to turn him into a Bob Cherry."

"A somewhat short junior, with a broad, pleasant face and an enormous pair of spectacles"

"I say you fellows, I expect to see fair play."

"Foreigners are funny"

"The donefulness is terrific."

"All boys ought to be drownded at birth."

"I am one of the endangered species: people who still write in meter and rime."

"How does one objectively define madness ?"

"A man must either fall or rise in adversity."

"On earth there are frontiers, in the sky there are none."

"But some children have clearer vision than adults."

"Even you must appreciate that to destroy the personnality while preserving the body is simply another kind of death."

"Historically, the developement of machines had amplified man's ability to destroy."

"In some way the material universe appears to be passing away like a tale that is told, dissolving into nothingness like a vision."

"Without mankind machines are nothing."

"I believe our only hope of immortality lies in our actions, in what we do to and for others, and in our children."

"I am rebelling against imprisonment, I am rebelling against tyranny of the mind, I am rebelling against a collection of machines with interchangeable faces. Above all, I am rebelling against my own ignorance and your deliberate deception."

"The mad can make their own laws."

"When one flowers dies, another is born."

"Behind the apparent unreason there is reason."

"There comes a time when a men desires to rise above fear."

"The journey is what matters."

"Destiny knows no favorites."

"But it is better to be destroyed on strange frontiers than to live in a prison of ignorance and fear."

"Only the absurd could have any bearing on reality."

"Mankind has never been renowned for accepting logical solutions to its most serious problems. As a rule, the degre of logicality of solutions seemed to vary inversely with the urgency or seriousness of the problems."

"To be with child does not diminish beauty, but changes the shape of beauty."

"Courage has many faces."

"Those who look for death have to wait patiently till death finds those who look."

"The colour of the skin is less important than the spirit wich moves it."