Betsy Byars Quotes

When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.

It was as if her life was a huge kaleidoscope, and the kaleidoscope had been turned and now everything was changed. The same stones shaken, no longer made the same design.

I have cried over myself a hundred times this summer, she thought, I have wept over my big feet and my skinny legs and my nose, I have even cried over my stupid shoes, and now when I have true sadness there are no tears left.

The people you don't know turn out to be exactly like the people you do know, same faults, same everything.

That was the trouble with life—it never quite fulfilled its promises.

I usually get the title for a book first, and I type it up immediately. I sit there and look at it and admire it, and I think to myself, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I'l have a book. It is such a pleasurable moment that I type many more title pages than I could ever use.

I stood right in this house, in that room," Aunt Willie interrupted. She pointed toward the front bedroom. "And I promised your mother, Sara, that I would look after Charlie all my life. I promised your mother nothing would ever happen to Charlie as long as there was breath in my body, and now look. Look! Where is this boy I'm taking such good care of?" She threw her hands into the air. "Vanished without a trace, that's where." Aunt Willie, you can't watch him every minute." Why not? Why can't I? What have I got more important in my life than looking after that boy? Only one thing more important than Charlie. Only one thing--that devil television there." Aunt Willie--" Oh, yes, that devil television. I was sitting right in that chair last night and he wanted me to sew on one button for him but I was too busy with the television. I'll tell you what I should have told your mother six years ago. I should have told her, "Sure, I'll be glad to look after Charlie except when there's something good on television. I'll be glad to watch him in my spare time.' My tongue should fall out on the floor for promising to look after your brother and not doing it.

I didn't know you were held back." "I was." "I didn't know you could be a teacher if you were held back." "You can be anything you want if you work hard." "And I guess you don't get extra credit because you're the teacher." "Right. I give all the credit to Mrs. Kincaid, who answered my SOS.

My daddy said, “Well, you kids better stay close to the house.” The morning went by, slow and scary. We did stay close to the house. Folks didn’t call our part of the country Tornado Alley for nothing. Along about lunch, it hit. Only there was no warning like we had today. No funnel cloud, no nothing. One minute we were eating beans and biscuits at the table. Next there was a roar—worse than a train—worse than a hundred trains. And then there came a terrible tearing sound, like the world was being ripped apart. I can still hear it in my mind. I looked up, and I saw sky. The ceiling was

my father pushed back his chair and said, “Let’s go see the damage.

(T)he government's just like a great, terrible ball, and when it starts rolling it crushes half of what it rolls over and picks up the other half. And it gets bigger and bigger and more powerful, and somebody's got to stop it.

What I was going to miss the most, though, were just everyday things that weren't planned at all.......That's the kind of fun that doesn't sound like much when you tell it, but I would miss it on the farm. -Tom, The Midnight Fox/Chapter 2

Pete opened the cellar doors.

What’s gotten into him?” “Five-Thirty,” I called back. “I didn’t ask the time,” she called. “Get that dog out of there, and fill that hole in.

mother to the stairs. “Can I ask you something?