Quimby Quotes

If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt...The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake

I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died." There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did." "Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world." There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly. "A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?" "Longevity?

But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy. She was ma heroine. I was a plucky little girl, but I never related to the rough-and-tumble icons of children's lit, like Pippi Longstocking or Harriet the Spy. Even Ramona Quimby, who seemed cool, wasn't somebody I could super-relate to. She was scrawny and scrappy and I was soft and sarcastic. I connected instead to Miss - never 'Ms.' - Piggy; the comedienne extraordinaire who'd alternate eye bats with karate chops, swoon over girly stuff like chocolate, perfume, feather boas or random words pronounced in French, then, on a dmie, lower her voice to 'Don't fuck with me, fellas' decibel when slighted. She was hugely feminine, boldly ambitious, and hilariously violent when she didn't get way, whether it was in work, love, or life. And even though she was a pig puppet voiced by a man with a hand up her ass, she was the fiercest feminist I'd ever seen.

Ramona required accuracy from books as well as people.

Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase “only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.

But also, as you go through life, you pick up shreds of things, and eventually you are able to fit them together

We have our ups and downs,” said Mrs. Quimby, “but we manage to get along, and we stick together.

Haven't you noticed grown-ups aren't perfect?" asked Mrs. Quimby. "Especially when they're tired." "Then how come you expect kids to be so perfect all the time?" demanded Ramona.

A happy ending for today,” corrected Ramona. Tomorrow they would begin all over again.

It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept. That statement is not really true On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had got up in the night, as it might be, to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and generally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned… The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would add hastily “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like “his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

Only grown-ups would say boots were for keeping feet dry. Anyone in kindergarten knew that a girl should wear shiny red or white boots on the first rainy day, not to keep her feet dry, but to show off. That’s what boots were for – showing off, wading, splashing, stamping.

Ramona was filled with the glory of losing her first tooth and love for her teacher. Miss Binney had said she was brave! This day was the most wonderful day in the world! The sun shone, the sky was blue, and Miss Binney loved her.

Ramona felt sad and somehow lonely, as if she were left out of something important, because her family was in trouble and there was nothing she could do.

She wanted a grown-up to be wrong for a change. She was tired of the rightness of grown-ups.

Her mother had said the words she longed to hear. Her mother could not get along without her. She felt warm, and safe and comforted.

For the first time, Ramona began to doubt that her father was the best artist in the whole world. This thought made her feel sad...

She did not want her father's hair to grow thin or her mother's hair to grow gray. She wanted her parents to stay exactly as they were forever and ever.

Miss Binney stood in front of her class and began to read aloud from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a book that was a favorite of Ramona’s because, unlike so many books for her age, it was neither quiet and sleepy nor sweet and pretty.

Nobody understood. She wanted to behave herself. Except when banging her heels on the bedroom wall, she had always wanted to behave herself. Why couldn’t people understand how she felt?

How can there be no such word as can't? Ramona wondered. Mrs. Rudge had just said can't. If there was so such word as can't then Mrs. Rudge could not have said there was no such word as can't. Therefore, what Mrs. Rudge said could not be true.

Plainly something had to be done and it was up to Beezus to do it.

No family is perfect. Get that idea out of your head. And nobody is perfect either. All we can do is work at it. And we do.

We can't always do what we want in life," answered her father, "so we do the best we can.

Nothing infuriated Ramona more than having a grown-up say, as if she could not hear, that she was worn out.

Miss Binney was not like most grown-ups. Miss Binney understood.

Grown-ups are supposed to be perfect." Both her parents laughed. "Well, they are!" Ramona insisted, annoyed by their laughter.

Grown-ups often forgot that no child likes to be ordered to be nice to another child.

IF YOU ARE EATING PEAS THINK OF ME BEFORE YOU SNEEZE Signed, Yard Ape PRESIDENT

Mrs. Quimby looked amused, which Ramona found pleasant, not like bring laughed at.

Ramona, are you having problems with your income tax?” Mrs. Quimby asked, behaving as if she were serious even though she was joking.

Why don’t you turn on the dawnzer?” Ramona asked, proud of her new word. Beezus looked up from her book. “What are you talking about?” she asked Ramona. “What’s a dawnzer?” Ramona was scornful. “Silly. Everybody knows what a dawnzer is.” “I don’t,” said Mr. Quimby, who had been reading the evening paper. “What is a dawnzer?” “A lamp,” said Ramona. “It gives a lee light. We sing about it every morning in kindergarten.” A puzzled silence fell over the room until Beezus suddenly shouted with laughter. “She-she means—” she gasped, “The Star-Spangled B-banner!” Her laughter dwindled to giggles. “She means the dawn’s early light.

She even had a name for this: malicious animal magnetism, or M.A.M. It was something Quimby had warned could happen. According to Mary, malicious animal magnetism consisted of transmitting malign thoughts in order to cause harm to another person.

Nobody but a genuine grown-up was going to take her to school. If she had to, she would make a great big noisy fuss, and when Ramona made a great big noisy fuss, she usually got her own way. Great big noisy fusses were often necessary when a girl was the youngest member of her family and the youngest person on her block.

She felt good from making a lot of noise, she felt good from the hard work from walking so far in her tin can stilts, she felt good from calling a grown-up pieface and from the triumph of singing backwards from ninety-nine to one. She felt good from being out after dark with the rain on her face and the streetlights shining down on her.

One spring day Ramona had got lost, because she started out to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Girls with birthdays don’t have to help clear the table,

Ramona made a face. “Mother, do you have to say that every single morning?” she asked in exasperation.

Don’t let old Whaley get you down,” he answered. “She likes you OK. You’re a good kid.

Ramona was the sort of girl who was always early because something might happen that she didn't want to miss.

She wanted to do something bad. She wanted to do something terrible that would shock her whole family, something that would make them sit up and take notice.

The book I read said ten is the nicest age of growing up. It said ten-year-olds are pleasant and agreeable

Having a sister who tried to act like the Virgin Mary was not easy for a girl who felt as Ramona did.

PEAS

Ramona, I hear the mission bells above, Ramona, they’re ringing out our song of love.” Ramona stared at her book as she thought mean, dark thoughts about Uncle Hobart.

Never again would he stand all day at a cash register, ringing up groceries for a long line of people who were always in a hurry. Ramona

It isn't fair, Ramona told herself, even though grown-ups were always telling her life was not fair. It wasn't fair that life was not fair.

Nothing in the world was worse than unhappy parents. Nothing. When parents were unhappy, the whole world seemed to go wrong.

Ramona, who did not mean to pester her mother, could not see why grown-ups had to be so slow.

She didn't have to go and tell that, thought Ramona, feeling that her mother had betrayed her by telling, as if it were funny, something she had done a long time ago.

Nobody had to tell Ramona life was full of disappointments. She already knew.

Scrimp and pinch to make ends meet, thought Ramona, liking the sound of the words.

She felt all churned up inside, as if she didn't know whether to cry or burst out of the house shouting, My mother and father had a fight!

Maybe grown-ups weren't perfect, but they should be, her parents most of all. They should be cheerful, loving, patient, never sick and never tired. Fun too.

Willa Jean did not feel she was beautiful because she was a healthy child. She felt beautiful like a grown-up lady on TV.

The Quimbys looked at her in astonishment. “But who paid for them?” demanded Mr. Quimby. “A lonely gentleman who left a little while ago,” answered the waitress. “He must have been the man who sat across the aisle,” said Mrs. Quimby. “But why would he pay for our dinners? We never saw him before in our lives.” The waitress smiled. “Because he said you are such a nice family, and because he misses his children and grandchildren.” She dashed off with her pot of coffee, leaving the Quimbys in surprised, even shocked, silence. A nice family? After the way they had behaved on a rainy Sunday. “A mysterious stranger just like in a book,” said Beezus. “I never thought I’d meet one.” “Poor lonely man,” said Mrs. Quimby at last,

People often called Ramona bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. When she was younger, she blinked her eyes, held up her hands like paws, and wiggled her bottom as if she were wagging a tail.

Until this minute she had thought all adults were supposed to like all children. She understood by now misunderstandings were to be expected- she had had several with teachers - and often children and grown-ups did not agree, but things somehow worked out. For a grown-up to actually dislike a child and try to shame her, she was sure had to be wrong, very, very wrong.

A dramatic turn in how the Western world came to view the mind played out in Maine in 1833. This development hinged upon the experience of a simple and extremely influential man: a New England clockmaker named Phineas P. Quimby. That year, quietly and with little forethought, Quimby embarked on a psychological experiment that formed the germination of the positive-thinking outlook.

When Ramona made a great big noisy fuss, she usually got her own way. Great big noisy fusses were often necessary when a girl was the youngest member of the family and the youngest person on her block.

Yard Apes!" yelled Ramona, her name for the sort of boys who always got the best balls, who were always first on the playground, and who chased their soccer balls through other people's hopscotch games.

Beezus has told her the way to remember how to spell the kind of principal who was the principal of a school was to remember the word ended in p-a-l, and not -p-l-e, was because the principal was her pal.

Ramona did not consider herself to be a pest. People who called her a pest did not understand that a littler person sometimes had to be a little bit noisier and a little bit stubborn in order to be noticed at all.

father pointed out. “Now run along. I have studying to do.” Ramona thought this answer over and decided that since her parents agreed, they must be right. Well, Mrs. Whaley could just go jump in a lake, even though

Pest was a fighting word to Ramona, because it was unfair. She was not a pest, at least not all the time. She was only littler than everyone else in the family, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not catch up.

her teacher had written, without wasting words, that she missed her. Ramona was going to give her book report any way she wanted. So there, Mrs. Whaley. Ramona went to her room and looked at her table, which the family called “Ramona’s studio,” because it was a clutter of crayons, different kinds of paper, Scotch tape, bits of yarn, and odds and ends that Ramona used for amusing herself. Then Ramona thought a moment, and suddenly, filled with inspiration, she went to work. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and set about doing it. She worked with paper, crayons, Scotch tape, and rubber bands. She worked so hard and with such pleasure that her cheeks grew pink. Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being

Clank, crash, clank. Ramona forgot about her father being out of a job, she forgot how cross he had been since he gave up smoking, she forgot about her mother coming home tired from work and about Beezus being grouchy lately. She was filled with joy.

That’s the one,” said Aunt Bea. “He used to chew licorice and spit on the grass to make the principal think he was chewing tobacco like a professional baseball player, which was what he wanted to be.” “Where’s this cute licorice-chewing uncle coming from, and how did he get so rich?” asked Ramona’s father, beginning to be interested. “Playing baseball?” “He’s coming from—” Ramona frowned. “I can’t remember the name, but it sounds like a fairy tale and has camels.” Narnia? Never-never-land? No, those names weren’t right. “Saudi Arabia,” said Beezus, who also went to the Kemps’ after school. Being in junior high school, she could take her time getting there. “Yes, that’s it!” Ramona wished she had remembered first. “Howie says he’s bringing the whole family presents.” She imagined bags of gold like those in The Arabian Nights, which Beezus had read to her. Of course, nobody carried around bags of gold today, but she enjoyed imagining them. “What’s Howie’s uncle doing in Saudi Arabia?” asked Mr. Quimby. “Besides spitting licorice in the sand?

Her age was difficult too- not old enough to sit down with her mother and sew something she wanted to sew and too old to go pulling out a whole box of Kleenex and flinging it all over the house like Willa Jean. People should not think being seven-and-a-half was easy because it wasn't

Maybe her father was angry with her. Maybe he had gone away because she tried to make him stop smoking. She thought she was saving his life, but maybe she was being mean to him. Her mother said she must not annoy her father, because he was worried about being out of work. Maybe she had made him so angry he did not love her anymore. Maybe he had gone away because he did not love her. She thought of all the scary things she had seen on television-houses that had fallen down in earthquakes, people shooting people, big hairy men on motorcycles -and she knew she needed her father to keep her safe.

Ramona understood what Beezus meant, because she felt sad too, and her stomach felt tight when her father came home tired and discouraged after a day in the checkout line. People were in a hurry, many were cross because the line was long, and some customers acted as if he were to blame because prices were so high.

She knew her mother and father loved one another, but, sometimes when they were tired and hurried, or when they had long, serious conversations after the girls had gone to bed, she wondered and worried, because she knew other children whose parents had stopped loving each one another. Now she knew everything was all right.

She read him a magazine article about how elephants could convey their movements to each other over long distances, warn of trouble and signal their readiness to mate. That’s what prayer can do, too, she said, if people just knew how to pay attention. He didn’t know about elephants or prayer or how unspoken things were transmitted but something in what she said must be true. Otherwise, how could he know what love felt like?

bulldozer.

tickle

She was

Portland

fat,

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

It was a warm September day, and Ramona, neat and clean, with lunch bag in hand, half skipped, half hopped, scrunching through the dry leaves on the sidewalk.

You have a little brother," she reminded him. "I know," answered Yard Ape, "but we just keep him for a pet.

Nobody understood what is was like to be six-years-old and the littlest in the family.

Ramona was not interested in tools or thinking things over and figuring things out. She was interested in results. Fast.

Beezus and Ramona defended their possessions from Willa Jean. This is what - called playing with Willa Jean.

She was often excited. She liked to be excited.

raincoat. Boots cost money, and Howie’s old boots are perfectly good. The soles are scarcely worn.” “The tops aren’t shiny,” Ramona told her mother. “And they’re brown boots. Brown boots are for boys.” “They keep your feet dry,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and that is what boots are for.” Ramona realized she looked sulky, but she could not help herself. Only grown-ups would say boots were for keeping feet dry. Anyone in kindergarten knew that a girl should wear shiny red or white boots on the first rainy day, not to keep her feet dry, but to show off. That’s what boots were for—showing off, wading, splashing, stamping. “Ramona,” said Mrs. Quimby sternly. “Get that look off your face this instant. Either you wear these boots or you stay

while Beezus held Ramona by the hand

Mrs. Quimby nibbled at her salad and glanced at her watch.

No!” screamed Ramona, who wanted to boss her own party.

Some ideas contain no intelligence because the author puts none in them.

the cure is not in the medicine, but in the confidence of the doctor

beliefs make us act, and our acts are directed by our beliefs.

Beezus looked up from her pot holder.

What we believe, that we create.” What then shall we create that is worth while?

For strength of will proves to be, not the power of a fluid or current, but concentration upon an interest or object that has engaged the attention.

In fact, the theory of correcting disease is the introduction of life.

I remain your friend and protector till the storm is over and the waters of your belief are still.

MIND IS SPIRITUAL MATTER Thought is also matter, but not the same matter, any more than the earth is the same matter as the seed which is put into it.