Children S Authors

"Here’s to dodgy adventures with disreputable relatives!"

"These dimensions impinge on one another. They touch. They interpenetrate. And where one dimension touches or passes through another, it forms a line of force on the landscape."

"How very bright this empire of stars, he mused. Which poet had said that?"

"We in our present generation stand on the cusp of a new and glorious dawn when mastery of these energies lies fully within our grasp as secret yields to inquiry, which yields to experimentation, which leads to verification and duplication, which, in the final course, leads to knowledge."

"Earth and fire and water and air We solemnly promise, we solemnly swear Not a word, not a hint, not a sound to declare Earth and fire and water and air!"

"I think hawking is the nearest thing to flying in this world. There you sit high up and poised light as air, the horse swift beneath you. You unhood your bird, let the jesses go and watch your falcon, its bells a-jingle, like some wild spirit take the air … and your own spirit goes with it."

"I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted. But in any case there was little time for them to play. There was work for even the smallest upon our land; some of our peasants had run away, tempted by ever-rising wages. Wages fixed by law were certainly low; but, like many another ruined in the French wars, we had no money to pay a penny more than the law laid down. All over the country men were running away from their masters and the land lost as many laborers as by the Black Death itself."

"Nobody seemed to know where the King was. He was at Windsor choosing new furnishings for the little Queen's rooms; he was hunting at Eltham; he was at Leeds Castle; he was at Havering. He was here, he was there, restless as quicksilver. Certainly I never set eyes on him. I was disappointed. And yet I was relieved, too. It was common talk that the King's moods shifted this way and that you never knew what to expect."

"There is no magic when one no longer believes."

"Why think of anything at all but the pretty, gentle child sitting high upon the white horse! So women holding up their children to see her pass cried blessings on her head, the easy blessings of a crowd, that may turn at any moment to curses. And there were wenches in plenty, who, seeing the little Queen in cloth of gold and the King at her side, handsome Richard, wished themselves, no doubt, in her place."

"Magic. Magic had happened to him. He knew it would one day. He had always believed in magic, even whe the others had laughed at him, laughed because he was the eldest and ought to know better."

"When she saw the children jumping first upon one bare foot and then upon the other, she envied them and wished that she, too, could run barefooted for a little while. For a little while. She was a royal child. She knew that golden shoes pinch and there is no escaping them."

"Magic doesn't happen often — not once in a blue moon … I expect there isn't another magic ship like this one in the whole world."

"I … allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness."

"The India I Love, does not make the headlines, but I find it wherever I go – in field or forest, town or village, mountain or desert – and in the hearts and minds of people who have given me love and affection for the better part of my lifetime."

"There is an immeasurable distance between submission to the cross and acceptance of it."

"Then Jesus spoke: "Bring here thy burden, And find in me a full release; Bring all thy sorrows, all thy longings, And take instead my perfect peace. Trying to bear thy cross alone! — Child, the mistake is all thine own.""

"Jesus loves me—this I know, For the Bible tells me so"

"And now my cross is all supported, — Part on my Lord, and part on me; But as He is so much the stronger, He seems to bear it — I go free."

"I wrote 87 Goosebumps books. That's a lot of books for a human, isn't it? None of us expected what happened with Goosebumps. We started it in 1992, and by 1994, I was turning out a Goosebumps a month, and it was doing okay for a while. And then it just took off like nothing we'd ever seen. It took off all over the world – not through advertising, hype, or promotions – but just kids telling kids. There's some kind of secret kids network out there. Just kids telling kids about it, and this thing grew everywhere. It was in 28 languages. At one point, after a couple years, we were selling 4 million Goosebumps books a month."

"Yes, I was a funny guy for a long time. When I started out, I just wanted to write humor. I wrote humor for kids. My very first book was called How to be Funny. It was about how to get big laughs at the dinner table and how to get laughs in school. Parents hated this book. I wrote joke books, like A Hundred and One Monster Jokes, and other joke books for years. I did maybe a hundred of them. I had a great time, and I did this humor magazine called Bananas for ten years. It was sort of Mad Magazine, but it was all in color, and it was great. That was all I ever wanted to do. I couldn't believe it. When that ended, I figured I would just coast for the rest of my career. That was it. I'd already done what I wanted to do. I had no idea what was coming up."

"Professor Branestawm, like all great men, had simple tastes. He wore simple trousers with two simple legs. His coat was simply fastened with safety pins because the buttons had simply fallen off..."

"Pulpit. A Yorkshireman's instruction to pound something to paste."

"But if you aren't any religion, how are you going to know if you should join the Y or the Jewish Community Center?"

"We must — we must — we must increase our bust!"

"My parents raised me, of course, but it was a different adult who shaped my mental landscape. My imagination, my capacity for empathy, my sense of curiosity and my awareness that, while I was unique, I wasn't alone: others felt the same fears and feelings as me. On top of all that, this woman taught me about menstruation, masturbation, making out and sex, which is a damned sight more than any teacher ever did. I was not the only one she took under her wing: there are millions and millions of us who were shaped by her – whole generations who grew up under her tutelage – because this woman is Judy Blume."

"It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers."

"Are you there God? It's Me, Margaret...."

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."

"But I scolded myself, That’s magical thinking, Marina. Consider instead what’s real."

"I took a deep breath. God…I prayed. And then I realize that I had nothing more to say to him. Nothing at all."

"But you know how it is: As soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it’s the most fascinating thing in the world."

"The thing about signs from God is that you can never be sure. In the morning, going to the Porta Potti, I saw a deer. There was also a dead pigeon being a smorgas-bird for crows near the perimeter when I went with a message for an Angel. And the shed skin of some small snake that Grahame had collected. If those were signs, what did they mean? God loved me? God hated me? God didn’t care?… I saw more signs than I can remember. The moon was still shining like a pale penny at noon. There was an eagle wheeling overhead at four. A pair of bluejays squabbled in a fir tree when I came out of the Place of Eating after dinner. God was saying yes? God was saying no? God wasn’t speaking at all?"

"We had more church after supper, with a long sermon from Reverend Beelson. He talked about wars and earthquakes and floods as signs that the End was coming. Which made me wonder if he had somehow managed to not notice that wars, earthquakes, and floods have been going on since the beginning of history. But I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t worth the effort."

"“Dad, everyone knows Beelson is a nutcase! You should hear the things they say about him in school.” My father looked at me sadly. “I thought you didn’t believe in basing your life on what everyone else says, Mr. Nonconformist.” “OK, skip what everyone else says. I think he’s nuts.”"

"But when I asked Mom, she shrugged and looked up at the sky. She had given up looking at me when we talked. “Reverend Beelson told us God would provide,” she said, as if reading that in the clouds. “And he does not lie.” It wasn’t clear if she meant Reverend Beelson or God."

"Wars may make heroes of men, but not all the time."

"I actually said a little prayer of my own then, my first since we had arrived: Please, God—get me out of this nuthouse!"

"Wars do not make heroes of everyone."

"“Did we do wrong in believing, Marina?” Mom asked suddenly. “Never in believing, Mom,” I said. “Just in what we believed.”"

"Overhead the swallows dipped down to catch bugs rising from the ground. Then they soared back up beyond the barracks. Hannah watched them for a moment, scarcely breathing. It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind. Once she’d seen a fox cross the meadow to disappear into the forest."

"She filled the pot, got out a new filter, threw the old one onto the garbage, and counted out five tablespoons of Columbian Supreme. Then she waited while the magic of modern invention turned tap water into a hot dark-brown caffeine-powered drink. It was better than any Biblical miracle and risked no beliefs."

"“I’ll drive. You navigate.” He grinned. “I judge people by how well they read maps.”"

"Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself."

"Princesses did not make scenes. One needed to be a queen to do that."

"“We are all sleeping princesses some time. But it is better to be fully awake, don’t you think?”...“Americans do not want to be awake?” “Oh,” Becca said, “we like the truth all right. When it’s tidy.” “Truth is never tidy. Only fairy tales.”"

"“No, you cannot…must not…shall not…may not…” to everything that seemed even the slightest bit interesting or exciting or dangerous. So Waverly did what every child of ten does. He did it all anyway."

"Time may heal wounds, but it does not erase the scars."

"Looking backward was an old man’s drug."

"Fifteen years can be a long or a short time, depending upon whether one is immortal or not."