Alan Gratz Quotes

You can live as a ghost, waiting for death to come, or you can dance.

All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. For the bright promise of mañana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabele: It didn't. Because I didn't change it.

Life is but a river. It has no beginning, no middle, no end. All we are, all we are worth, is what we do while we float upon it — how we treat our fellow man.

If no one saw them, no one could help them. And maybe the world needed to see what was really happening here.

Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in. Disappear. That was how you avoided the bullies.

If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o'clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them. But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did.

Good books shouldn’t be hidden away. They should be read by as many people as many times as possible.

Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

But as she watched Lito and Papi lift up Ivan's body, the empty place inside got bigger and bigger, until she was more empty than full.

That’s what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did.

I had managed to scare even the monsters, and when you can scare monsters, you can be sure you've become one yourself.

It was easy to see the worst of humanity, when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me that there was still good in the world. Even if I rarely saw it.

Fight against the impossible and win,

It was all a big joke. I could see that now. There was no rhyme or reason to whether we lived or died. One day it might be the man next to you at roll call who is torn apart by dogs. The next day it might be you who is shot through the head. You could play the game perfectly and still lose, so why bother playing at all?

Being brave doesn't mean not being scared. It means overcoming your fear to do what you have to do.

And you wanted to escape,' a man near me whispered to another man. 'You wanted to run off into the woods and fight. But do you see? Do you see what the rest of them think about us? These people would sell you back to the Nazis for a sack of potatoes and then toast you at their dinner table.

I shook with helplessness and rage, but also with fear. This was what fighting back earned you. More abuse. More death. Half a dozen Jews would be murdered today because one man refused to die without a fight. To fight back was to die quickly and to take others with you. This was why prisoners went meekly to their deaths. I had been so resolved to fight back, but I knew then that I wouldn't. To suffer quietly hurt only you. To suffer loudly, violently, angrily--to fight back--was to bring hurt and pain and death to others.

And that was the real truth of it, wasn't it? Whether you were visible or invisible, it was all about how other people reacted to you. Good and bad things happened either way. If you were invisible, bad people couldn't hurt you, that was true. But the good people couldn't help you, either. If you stayed invisible here, did everything you were supposed to and never made waves, you would disappear from the eyes and minds of all the good people out there who could help you get your life back. It was better to be visible. To stand up. To stand out.

And without a dream, without ambition, what point was there to living?

You can live as a ghost, waiting for death to come, or you can dance.

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

Little Mariano was at home, getting fat

There were some horrors you couldn't fight and couldn't change. The real courage was just in enduring them.

You Americans think you can fix everything by throwing money at it,” she added. “But your friend was right. This is like the Stone Age. Because no one will let us get past the Stone Age. Not when there is nothing but war. Do you understand? The best thing you can do to help us is leave us alone.

Michael, it's terrible to say so, but sometimes you have to weigh the cost of one man's life against the value of an entire operation.

Fear isn't a weakness. Anyone who's never been afraid is a fool.

It was easy to think the worst of humanity when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me there was still good in the world, even if I rarely saw it.

They only see us when we do something they don't want us to do, Mahmoud realized. The thought hit him like a lightning bolt. When they stayed where they were supposed to be - in the ruins of Aleppo or behind the fences of a refugee camp - people could forget about them. But when refugees did something they didn't want them to do - when they tried to cross the border into their country, or slept on the front stoops of their shops, or jumped in front of their cars, or prayed on the decks of their ferries - that's when people couldn't ignore them any longer. Mahmoud's first instinct was to disappear below decks. To be invisible. Being invisible in Syria had kept him alive. But now Mahmoud began to wonder if being invisible in Europe might be the death of him and his family. If no one saw them, no one could help them. And maybe the world needed to see what was really happening here.

We’re a team,” his dad repeated. “That’s what we’ve always said. This is how we survive, right? Together. It’s you and me against the world. But you shut me out on this one. And you let down the team.

Josef followed the small group of kids through the raised doorway onto the bridge of the St. Louis. The bridge was a narrow, curving room that stretched from one side of the ship to the other. Bright sunlight streamed in through two dozen windows, offering a panoramic view of the vast blue-green Atlantic and wispy white clouds. Throughout the wood-decked room were metal benches with maps and rulers on them, and the walls were dotted with mysterious gauges and meters made of shining brass.

The ceremony was fast so we wouldn't be caught. When it was over, the men all whispered 'Mazel tov' and climbed back onto their shelves. I went up to the boy and pressed the wooden horse into his hands, the only present I could give him. The boy looked at me with big, round eyes. Had I ever been so young? 'We are alive,' I told him. 'We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.' I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive.

Ichariba choodee,” she said in Okinawan. It meant, “Now that we’ve met, we’re family.

No. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Lito said, looking up into the red-tinged clouds. “A storm is coming.

Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in.

I had survived the work gangs in the ghetto. Baked bread under cover of night. Hidden in a pigeon coop. Had a midnight bar mitzvah in the basement of an abandoned building. I had watched my parents be taken away to their deaths, had avoided Amon Goeth and his dogs, had survived the salt mines of Wieliczka and the sick games of Trzebinia. I had done so much to live, and now, here, the Nazis were going to take all that away with their furnace! I started to cry, the first tears I had shed since Moshe died. Why had I worked so hard to survive if it was always going to end like this? If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let them kill me back in the ghetto. It would have been easier that way. All that I had done was for nothing.

Moving forward was scary. Sometimes you made mistakes. Sometimes you took the wrong path. And sometimes, even when you took the right path, things could go wrong. But Reshmina realized that she wanted—needed—to keep moving forward, no matter what.

That means letting them read books that are too easy for them, or too hard for them. That means letting them read books that challenge them, or do nothing but entertain them. And yes, it means letting students read books with things in them we might disagree with and letting them make up their own minds about things, which is downright scary sometimes. But that’s what good education is all about.

If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them.

we’d stood up to Hitler and the Nazis with the rest of the Allies.

What were they thinking, those little German children? Did they see animals when they looked at us, or people? I wasn't so sure myself anymore.

It’s not who you’re fighting against that matters. It’s what you’re fighting for.

tears

motorboat

Mr. Pilkey smiled. “Well, I wish they were on the shelves, where everybody could read them,” he said. “I think it’s important that libraries be a place where you can find all kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, serious ones. Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it’s valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.

A girl from the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the girls’ version of the Hitler Youth, came and collected him.

There were some horrors you couldn’t fight and couldn’t change. The real courage was just in enduring them.

savaged him,

Because that’s what Nazi Germany was: the bully who found your most painful wound and poked at it with a stick.

THUMP.

It’s

wn

None of the boys were studying for the math test we had today, because none of them cared.

Maybe Horst really believed all that “might makes right” malarkey. Maybe he didn’t like an Irish boy showing up the German “master race.” Or maybe he was just a bleeding maggot.

Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can't make you into a bad person

People didn’t just hand you their secrets. You had to go hunting for them.

That’s what a bully is,” his dad said. “Somebody who pushes people around and never gets in trouble for it.

I wasn’t happy about it, but I respected their decision. Every now and then you had to break the rules to do the right thing, but a lot of times following the rules was the right thing.

Baseball, more than any other sport, has a magical way of connecting fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren and ancestors back down the line. - From The Brooklyn Nine

Whether you were visible or invisible, it was all about how other people reacted to you. Good and bad things happened either way. If you were invisible, the bad people couldn’t hurt you, that was true. But the good people couldn’t help you, either. If you stayed invisible here, did everything you were supposed to and never made waves, you would disappear from the eyes and minds of all the good people out there who could help you get your life back. It was better to be visible. To stand up. To stand out.

I hope you'll listen to what they have to say and think about how you can make a difference for the future. Because we're all together on this island we call Earth, and we're the only ones who can save it. Thank you!

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn't matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

This is what it must feel like to be an ant among elephants, Akira thought. The giant sequoias made her feel small and insignificant, but in a good way. They reminded her that she wasn't at the center of the universe. That there were things that were far older and bigger than she was.

the gibbous moon glowed bloodred in the sky,

Führer,

We're a team, you and I

were weren’t

Then, after you have killed as many Americans as you can,” Sano added, “you are to use the other grenade to kill yourself.

This is it! Stay low, don’t bunch up, and run like hell!

How you frame a photo says everything about the story you’re trying to tell.

But I was beginning to see how she must have thought she was doing something good for us, even though she was wrong.

Every book banned by the school board in this novel is the title of a book that has been challenged or banned in an American library at least once in the last thirty years.

Germany surrendered. Hitler committed suicide. The Nazis are through.

Maybe, Reshmina thought, they wouldn’t fight at all. Maybe they would spend their time doing something else instead, like building factories and schools and hospitals.

They only see us when we do something they don't want us to do

She was disappointed, I could tell, and suddenly the only thing I wanted in the world was to please her.

Nobody has the right to tell you what books you can and can’t read except your parents.

had had

They lined the men up against a wall in the assembly yard. Rat-tat-tat-tat! The watch officer gunned them down himself, riddling their bodies with bullets.

burst. How could I possibly wait? He turned to

So, you’re English?” Fritz asked. I bristled at the insult.

There was no letter in the Jewish stars though. No matter where we had come from, we had no country. We were only Jews.

Cubs are super cute, but you do not want to come between a cub and it's mother. Momma Bear will wreck you.

How was he standing on top of the water, but still moving?

They filled my table and the tables all around me, taking the places of all the real people in the room. The dead would always be with me, I knew, even when I was surrounded by life again,

But this is—this is incredible!” Goldsmit stopped in an empty hallway next to a table with a vase full of edelweiss flowers. “Switzerland is neutral!” “Do you think the Nazis care?” I asked him.

An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman meet a magical fellow at the top of a tall building. The wizard tells them that if they jump off the building, whatever they say while they’re falling will appear at the bottom. So the Englishman, he jumps off first, being the bravest of them of course, and he yells, ‘Pillows!’ and he lands on a big pile of pillows. The Scotsman jumps off next, and on the way down he yells, ‘Hay!’ and he lands in a big pile of hay. Last up is the Irishman, but he trips on the edge of the building right as he’s about to jump, and as he falls he yells, ‘Oh, crap!

Silly to you, maybe. All reasons are silly to someone else, and we think the challenges to the books already removed are silly. What makes one person’s reason any sillier than another person’s reason?

Remember: You are no one. You have no name. You do not speak, you do not look at them, you do not volunteer for anything. You work, bot not so hard they notice you. Gizela. Zytka. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve for them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it’s valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.

Sergeant Meredith was the one who’d taught him how to survive. Sergeant Meredith was the one who’d given him his nickname. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had listened when Ray had argued for the Okinawans. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had taught Ray how to grieve for the death of a soldier.

What story does the picture tell?" Lieutenant Tanaka had said to Hideki. "That's what I'm always asking myself. Not just what's happening in the photograph I take, but what happened before it was taken, and what will happen afterward. How you frame a photo says everything about the story you're trying to tell.

Папа уже дважды пытался бежать с Кубы. В первый раз он и еще трое сколотили плот, чтобы на веслах добраться до Флориды. Но тропический шторм вынудил их вернуться. Во второй раз лодка была моторной. Но его задержала кубинская береговая охрана, после чего он отсидел в тюрьме год. Теперь сбежать стало еще труднее. Американцы ввели новые правила, которые все называли «Мокрые ноги, сухие ноги». Если кубинских беженцев ловили в море с «мокрыми ногами», их немедленно отсылали обратно. Но если им удавалось вынести путешествие через Флоридский пролив, не попасть в руки береговой охраны США и ступить на американскую землю, то есть если их ловили с «сухими ногами», им давали специальный статус беженцев, позволяли остаться и стать американскими гражданами. Папа хотел сбежать снова. И на этот раз, независимо от того, поймают его с мокрыми или сухими ногами, не собирался возвращаться. «Но, может, это и означает стать мужчиной? Может, мужчине больше не следует полагаться на отца?» – думал Йозеф.

It was a world war, and the fate of every nation on Earth, neutral or not, lay in the balance. When the war was over, the world would be ruled one way, or the other—by freedom or fascism, by hope or by fear. I had seen the depths, the lengths, the Nazis would go to win that war, sacrificing their own children to the cause, and I also knew firsthand the sacrifices the Allies had made to stop them. I

And then I found the Code. It was buried under some of the things they’d dumped out of his desk. A piece of loose-leaf notebook paper with Darius’s thirteen-year-old scrawl on it, mounted on a faded sheet of blue construction paper. THE CODE OF HONOR, it said at the top, and underneath were written the seven rules we thought all heroes should live by: 1) Be the strongest of the strong. 2) Be the bravest of the brave. 3) Help the helpless. 4) Always tell the truth. 5) Be loyal. 6) Never give up. 7) Kill all monsters. We were big on killing monsters.

against Natalie and her mother, slamming them into the wall. Natalie saw stars as pain shot through her, and she fought to stay conscious. The waterlogged mattress knocked her under again, and Natalie’s scream was swallowed by another mouthful of warm, salty water. Natalie fought her way back up again and found Mama beside her, coughing and gagging but all right. And there was Churro too, clinging to the sofa. The little dog was still alive! The sofa was upside down, and Churro stood on top of it, barking his head off as though the couch had personally attacked him.

Reshmina was barely listening. All she could do was stare wide-eyed at the translator. All the Afghan women Reshmina knew were mothers, wives, and daughters. None of them had jobs outside the home—and especially not important jobs like translator, where they worked and talked with men outside their families. “Who are you?” Reshmina whispered to the translator. The woman smiled. “My name is Mariam. I’m from Kabul.” Reshmina couldn’t believe it. It was like a whole new path had appeared before her that she hadn’t known was there before. A whole new person she could become.

A life was a symphony, with different movements and complicated musical forms. A song was something shorter. A smaller piece of a life.

today’s al-Qaeda attack on the US embassy in Turkey.” My mother sobbed once, and my father closed his eyes. I shook my head, silently pleading with Darius not to say this. Not to do this. But he kept going. “I was once asked to commit atrocities against the Muslim people by the United States government,” Darius said, reading from a piece of paper. “I now choose to lead those same innocent victims in the fight against American tyranny. Today’s strike on the US embassy is merely the first in a series of planned attacks against the United States to

explosions. The battle was over. “Yes, Mor,” Reshmina

Shabbos