Children S Authors

"We passed s and playing-grounds, and heard from open factory windows the magnified cheerfulness of ""."

"Our display is quickly over, since fireworks, we know, cost money, and we three children, from a very early age, are made aware that money is a commodity of which we have wretchedly little. We also know that we mustn't speak of this. Our poverty, like my fear of explosions, is something to be ashamed of, and so to be concealed from the world outside the family. One day my mother, throwing a handful of scrumpled-up rubbish on the fire, notices with horror that amongst the rubbish is a . Ten shillings is a fortune! Too late! It's gone for ever in a lick of flame. Kneeling on the hearthrug, she bursts into tears. This is the first, but not the last time I behold my mother weeping."

"We meet in Smith's idyllic little house bordering in . There are overgrown roses in the front garden and the shelves are crammed full of books, family photographs and a solitary carved wooden bear. An almost-completed crossword lies on a pile of paper next to her armchair. The whole thing is delightfully redolent of a slightly chaotic . As we sit down to talk, a man from pest control knocks on the door and removes a dead mouse from the kitchen. Smith is unperturbed."

"The opening volume of her childhood s, The Great Western Beach (2009), described the first 12 years of her family life in , where all was not well in her parents’ marriage; As Green as Grass begins when the family moves to a house called Melrose in the village of , , where all continues to be not well between Mummy and Daddy. ... What the book is really about is escape: from Melrose, from working as a local schoolteacher in Devon, from a grinding job as secretary in a stuffy hut in the grounds of . ... After the war Smith decides she would like to work in s, and the next thing she knows, she’s on a boat to India with as well as ‘ — Bunny’. She’s the junior, the dogsbody of the filming team, but adores it and, again, we luxuriate in this new escape. Ralph — Bunny wants her to be ‘his girl’, but she escapes from him, too, and marries a much nicer man, who dies six years later. And then, the long silence."

"This was India, made for her amusement. Even the sun invited her to pour out her gladness, to soak up its immense generous heat and sweat out her salty thanks. Even the beggars pranced with hope."

"The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us — oh, they’re the worst of all!"

"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention."

"A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time."

"I don't believe the half I hear, Nor the quarter of what I see! But I have one faith, sublime and true, That nothing can shake or slay; Each spring I firmly believe anew All the seed catalogues say!"

"Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife; This simple boon I beg of Fate — A thousand years of Middle Life."

"He laughs best who laughs last, The wiseacres vow; But I am impatient, I want to laugh now."

"Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive."

"I love the Christmas-tide, and yet, I notice this, each year I live; I always like the gifts I get, But how I love the gifts I give!"

"“A noble theme!” the tyro cried; And straightway scribbled off a sonnet. “A noble theme,” the poet sighed; “I am not fit to write upon it.”"

"It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't."

"A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye."

"Of two evils choose the prettier."

"They borrow books they will not buy, They have no ethics or religions; I wish some kind Burbankian guy Could cross my books with homing pigeons!"

"says that the gum-resin, called ', is supposed to be the incense formerly used by the ancients in their religious ceremonies, though not the substance known by that name in shops. It is much employed by the Roman Catholics in their chapels, for similar uses: when burned, it diffuses a very fragrant smell. This olibanum, or true frankincense, has been supposed to be the produce of the , but that plant does not afford any resin. The olibanum now sold in the shops is the produce of the ."

"... queen Elizabeth ... is said to have planted an with her own hand at , in which she was brought up when an infant. It went always by her name, and I remember it a stately flourishing tree, except that the top was decayed. It stood at the upper end of , near where the turnpike now is, and was boundary of the parish on the north side. It was felled, to the great regret of the neighbourhood, on the 11th of November 1745, and sold for a , by lord of the manor."

"The , from the esculent quality of the s, which, in times of scarcity, are frequently eaten by the poor in the south of France, ground, and made into bread: some eat them fresh like nuts; they are sweet, and very different from our s. This Oak was cultivated by in 1739."

"The is most appropriately named, for, in addition to the pensive drooping appearance of its branches, it is common to see little drops of water, which stand like fallen tears upon the leaves. The willow will grow in any but a dry soil, but most delights and best thrives in the immediate neighbourhood of water."

"All Europe, and the temperate parts of the vast , abound with . The , which is little regarded in warmer climates, is used for a variety of purposes in the bleak and barren , and in other northern countries. ... In the it affords a dye. en cloth boiled in water, and afterwards in a strong decoction made from the green tops and flowers of this plant, becomes of a beautiful orange-colour. Brettius relates, that a kind of ale brewed from these young tops was much used by the : and it is said to be still an ingredient in the beer in some of the Western Isles. In many parts of Great Britain s are made of this Heath; and it is an excellent fuel. The flowers are either a kind of rose-colour slightly tinged with purple, or they are quite white. Bees collect a great quantity of honey from them."

"The is an evergreen shrub, with fine glossy leaves: the honey-breathing blossoms, as Evelyn terms them, come out in May; they are numerous, but very small, and are very grateful to bees. It is a native of Europe and , and was introduced into this country in 1629."

"is thought to make the best , and its soot is a good lamp-black for printers' ink. The leaves are good fodder for horses, kine, sheep, and goats; and the seeds are the favourite food of the ."

"Bess Kent is an enigmatic figure. We know she wrote voluminous letters, in which she laid her heart bare, but few have survived. We know that she wrote at least three books — two about flowers and trees and one for children, and that she planned to write another — but we know little about how she conducted her research, or how long these books took her to write. In the late 1810s and early 1820s she attempted to wean herself off , but there is little to indicate when she first developed this addiction. She made at least one suicide attempt and threatened to make others, but the circumstances surrounding them are a matter of conjecture."

"I get energy from people."

"I have always believed the aphorism that life is short and art is long, Ars Longa, Vita Brevis. Objects define, and often outlast, civilizations."

"The world of art is about free expression. But it is not about bullying and intimidation. I welcome debate and discussion about the realities of life in the digital age. There is a place for these debates, but they should be constructive, fair and factual - not based upon toxic personal attacks."

"If Monica Dickens means nothing more to you than horsey books and no-nonsense memoirs of nursing and service, then this eloquent novel about the genteel poverty of a widow shunted between her three egotistical daughters is a fine corrective."

"With the suit, Christine wore a grey felt beret which had been sold to her cheaply by Mrs Arnold in Millinery, because it had a mark on the back and no customer would buy it. Women were absurdly fussy when they had money to spend. When they were walking along they were just ordinary women, quite meek and obeying the policeman at the crossing; but as soon as Goldwyn's commissionaire, who bought his medals at the Surplus Supply stores in the , had pushed open the swing doors for them, they became customers, and that made them arrogant. Christine had easily removed the mark on the hat with some lighter fluid. Any woman could have done the same; but to have noticed the mark with a shrewd mouth, to have refused to buy the polluted hat made them feel recherché."

"The road from Boston to Cape Cod is long and straight and ruthless. Two black slashes cutting through the sandy country of pine and scrub oak which never grow to any size before a motorist throws out a cigarette on to the dry grass and levels everything neatly down again. In winter, the cars carry Boston businessmen in hats worn straight and true, and women with plastic statues of the Sacred Heart suctioned to the dashboard. In summer, the cars are full of families, and trail boats and little houses behind them. When the road was made, for the locust families to redouble their assault on Cape Cod, hills were leveled, hollows filled, the landscape brought to order. The bare scrub land is empty since everyone has gone top-heavily to the coast, like passengers crowding to the ship's rail."

"In the Refusal Race, you had to trot up to a jump, stop the horse and sail over the jump by yourself on to Anna's spare-room mattress."

"... I took the ashes out to the , leaving a little trail of cinders from a broken corner of the box. The trouble about housework is that whatever you do seems to lead to another job to do or a mess to clear up."

"Like an isle rose Monticello through the cooled and rippling trees, Like an isle in rippling starlight in the silence of the seas. Ceased the mocking-bird his singing; said the slaves with faltering breath, "'Tis the Third, and on the morrow Heaven will send the Angel Death.""

"One taper lights a thousand, Yet shines as it has shone; And the humblest light may kindle A brighter than its own. Between a man of peace and war."

"In the past his soul is living as in fifty years ago, Hastes again to Philadelphia, hears again the Schuylkill flow — Meets again the elder Adams — knowing not that far away He is waiting for Death's morrow, on old Massachusetts Bay; Meets with Hancock, young and courtly, meets with Hopkins, bent and old, Meets again calm Roger Sherman, fiery Lee, and Carroll bold, Meets the sturdy form of Franklin, meets the half a hundred men Who have made themselves immortal, — breathes the ancient morn again."

"Methinks when I stand in life's sunset, As I stood when we parted at school, I shall see the bright faces of children I loved in the village of Yule."

"Lovely land of Palestina! he thy shores will never see, But, his dream fulfilled, he follows Him who walked in Galilee."

"Reads again the words puissant, "All men are created free," Claims again for man his birthright, claims the world's equality."

"No job is ugly, unless it's made ugly by the person doing it. In the Heroic Age of Basil II: Emperor of Byzantium (in Greek), 1911, chapter XIII"

"The war's red flames, Charging Tarleton, proud Cornwallis, navies moving on the James."

"The voice of the Russias has spoken; Each serf in the Russias is free! Ring, bells, on the Neva and Volga, Ring, bells, on the Caspian Sea!"

""An empire to be lost or won!" And who four thousand miles will ride And climb to heaven the Great Divide, And find the way to Washington, Through mountain cañons, winter snows, O'er streams where free the north wind blows, Who, who will ride from Walla-Walla, Four thousand miles, for Oregon?"

"Evening in majestic shadows fell upon the fortress' walls: Sweetly were the last bells ringing on the James and on the Charles. 'Mid the choruses of freedom two departed victors lay, One beside the blue Rivanna, one by Massachusetts Bay. He was gone, and night her sable curtain drew across the sky; Gone his soul into all nations, gone to live and not to die."

"I healed the wound, and each morning It sang its old sweet strain, But the bird with the broken pinion Never soars so high again."

"It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain."

"Number the riches by thy memory hoarded, Relics of joys thy by-past years have known, — How many real things has life afforded? How much true light was o'er thy pathway thrown?"

"— The grave's dark portal Soon shuts this world of shadows from our view, Then shall we grasp realities immortal, If to the truth within us we are true."

"There dwelleth in the sinlessness of youth A sweet rebuke that vice may not endure."