Richard Peck Quotes

Only the nonreader fears books.

I read.. because one life is not enough

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody; I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life; I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map; I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material; I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing; I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready.

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one.

I read because one life isn’t enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit.

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing.

Stay away from people who don't know who they are but want you to be just like them. People who'll want to label you. People who'll try to write their fears on your face.

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready

...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.

Nobody but a reader becomes a writer.

I read because one life isn't enough.

September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.

She had eyes in the back of her heart.

I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.

Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'?

Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

At last she said, "Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They're like a pack of hound dogs. They'll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.

Besdies, to turn me ladylike might have rendered me useless and possibly ornamental.

This was something Grandma Tilly couldn't understand---how war promises a boy it can make a man out of him.

She said that time was like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. She meant you could never go back. But of course we had. She'd taken me back.

I don’t think grandma’s a very good influence on us.

Why she hankered to be a teacher, I couldn't tell you. But she had chalk dust in her veins, and she deserved to get that certificate. It was only fair.

We'd gotten him wrong. He wasn't a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he'd seen us all a good deal clearer than we'd ever seen him.

Conformity is the enemy of friendship

A solider must leave someone behind,' she said. 'What men do best is walk away from women. Wars are handy for that.

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the pages of a book I can be anybody

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep.

And I'll tell you something else for free. If you set a foot over that doorsill, I'll wring your red neck.

Never worry about a book corrupting a child. Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books.

As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began.

Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie.

Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking-order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm.” He stared back at me in silence. “Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just then. It would have been easier. I had to stop myself. That’s what an Envoy is, Curtis. A reassembled human. An artifice.

Thérèse (of Lisieux) told her sister, Celine, who was upset with her own faults, "If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be a pleasant place of shelter for Jesus." If you observe yourself, you will see how hard it is to be "displeasing" to yourself, and that this is the initial emotional snag that sends you into terribly bad moods without even realizing the origins of these moods. So to resolve this common problem, both Francis and Thérèse teach you to let go of the very need to "think well of yourself" to begin with! That is your ego talking, not God, they would say. Only those who have surrendered their foundational egocentricity can do this, of course. Psychiatrist and writer Scott Peck once told me that Thérèse's quote was "sheer religious genius" because it made the usual posturing of religion well-nigh impossible.

And don’t look for anything out of the law around here,” she said. “The Cowgills and the Leapers is kin to the sheriff. No justice in these parts. It’s every man for hisself.” “But as the saying goes, if you can’t get justice,” Mrs. Dowdel remarked, “get even.

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you

The sobs came then, faster than she could swallow. A teacher dares not cry, not a real teacher.

The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.' Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy's son could have been my dad.

He pulls the tape off Allegra's mouth. Grabs her BY THE HAIR and gives her a peck on the lips.

So there is some justice in this world, though not a lot.

But it was a rich, picture-perfect, it-can't-happen-here kind of suburb where people had gone, not to deal with life's problems, but to avoid them.

We thought he was weird. He thought we were weird. It was great. It was what multiculturalism ought to be" -Archer

A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed.

I seen but little of this world, Except my corner of it; The city never drew me, For I knew I could not love it. What I loved best was watching The garden getting ripe And a pouch of sweet tobacco And my old cob pipe. What I loved best was a harvest moon Before a frosty morn And lamplight in the barn lot And them long, straight rows of corn. I was plain and country; That's where it starts and ends, But nobody loved her family more, Or treasured more her friends. I loved the changing seasons, And looking for life's reasons, And honey in the comb, and home.

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody

We write by the light of every book we've read.

It was always August.

Are all my memories true? Every word, and growing truer with the years.

What little we knew about grownups didn't seem to cover Grandma.

Grandma saved herself a lot of bother by not being the kind of person you question.

Even from a distance, he looked like somebody you didn't want to know better.

I am here to help her learn," Tansy said, "not to keep her from it.

Always devise your rules as if you didn’t know whether you were going be at the top or the bottom of the pecking order.

Aunt Agnes said, “It's hard to make a good Christian out of a cat.

Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats.

[T]he name that matters is the name you make for yourself in a life of struggle and success!

Hayseeds we might be, but we meant to be informed hayseeds.

But later when I was a teacher, an English teacher naturally, my students preferred fiction to reality. They were in junior high, and so they preferred ANYTHING to reality.

At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. . . . She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do.

Then a lady flounced up and perched on the seat opposite. She had a full bird on the wing sewn to the crown of her hat, and she was painted up like a circus pony, so we took her to be from Chicago.

Mother told her she looked just like the duchess of York, but younger. Lucille returned the compliment by remarking that Mother looked just like Queen Alexandra, but younger. And Dad wondered aloud what was wrong with good American people: “You look right miserable, Dad,” I told him. “So do you, Alexander, but younger,” he replied.

We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their water.

Every time a human walks out of a room, something with more feet walks in. For every job a human holds, there is a mouse with the same job and doing it better. You don't see a cat that shocked every day of the week. Even her whiskers looked scandalized. Time you saw a bit of the world, if you're to find your place in it, the horse said. Nobody ever learned who he was by staying in the stable. He was the picture of skepticism. Also pomposity. He was so noble a figure that I could scarcely look at him full on. Every bit of his bearing was living proof of the grandeur mice can rise to. British mice. Of course they would be foreign, being bats. Romanian, Transylvanian, Something. The Belgians followed in a great mob. And hard on their heels the Spanish, their claws clicking like castanets across the marble. Then the Russians in all their barbaric splendor. Romanov rodents in caterpillar-fur caps. Even one of the Gorgonzola princes from Italy, looking very blue-veined.

When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a view north through a large sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader.

But on that day she was somewhat bent, as teachers get toward the end of a school year. As high school teachers go, he was about average, but he struck so many vain poses that I personally thought he would have done better on the stage. Mama is a fortune-teller by trade, but in the fall we add to our income by nut gathering. We also do a certain amount of gardening, often in other people's gardens. Curiosity killed the cat. But satisfaction brought that cat back. What is history but mankind's record where we look for guidance?

You were not cut out for a quiet life because you are honest to a fault. A man can want something to the point of indecency, he said, and when he attains his goal, it is ashes in his mouth and a bad conscience. The twentieth century did not look to be an age with any patience for the past.

Besides, I've noticed that only a thin line divides the insane from the rest of the population. I was reminded of how a cat will freeze on a fence with one paw drawn up, to see if you are friend or foe. To turn me ladylike might have rendered me useless and possibly ornamental. Then I would not be able to fend for myself. The public does not mind being cheated, but they like it to be convincing. The truth is too much for some people and too little for others. In this life you take what people are willing to give. No more. No less. New York is a place where everybody has their hands out for your money. In a savage world we have to cling to whatever small pleasures and niceties we can devise. I could have done better and I might have done worse. But that's true of life in general. It's a strange thing about the public. They'll believe anything written on a sign. And they'll see exactly what they expect to see. No more. No less.

I was getting long in the leg but still short on experience.

She commenced to nibble around one of the sugar roses and before I could back out of the bushes darted her face forward and gave me a thank-you kiss on the mouth. It took me by surprise and had a strawberry flavor. My luck being what it is, Lucille was mounting the porch steps just then and had a clear view of this business behind the bushes. Looking down, she said very haughty, “Alexander! How disgusting and at my party too!” So I told her that what I was doing under the porch was not a patch on what she did on the porch with Tom Hackett.

Gladys took a supper tray upstairs to Mother, who said she could not face anybody anymore that night or maybe ever. Lucille was a worse case. She stalked through all the rooms staring up at the ceilings like she was planning to take her cue from Captain Campbell and hang herself from a light fixture.

Grandma's lie were more interesting, even historical.

The ceremony took place at 11 A.M. Mr. L. Weister, a civil servant would perform the ceremony. He was a tall robust man with a big, healthy red face and thick gray hair. Doreen was very nervous. Richard wanted to get the whole thing over with and get back to his cell. An author and one of Richard’s attorneys joined the wedding party. In front of an Alpine mural one of the inmates had painted, the ceremony took place. It was short and sweet—they did not say “until death do us part.” They exchanged vows, wedding rings, and it was over in two minutes. Richard gave Doreen a peck on the lips.

Notice how Bernard’s words to his monastic brothers echo those of Jesus: “Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a scepter but a hoe.”8 Richard J. Foster comments, “[Jesus] totally and completely rejected the pecking-order systems of his day. . . . Therefore the spiritual authority of Jesus is an authority not found in a position or a title, but in a towel.

But witnesses will say a good deal to make a long story out of a short happening.

But witnesses will say a good deal to make a long story out of a short happening.

His gaze shifted away, and in his first breathless moment, his eyes fixed as if they saw only a vast blank canvas waiting to be filled.

His gaze shifted away, and in his first breathless moment, his eyes fixed as if they saw only a vast blank canvas waiting to be filled. - Jessica

That's the way people is who ain't goin' anyplace in life theirselves. They don't want you goin' anyplace either.

The fading relevance of the nature–nurture argument has recently been revived by the rise of evolutionary psychology. A more sophisticated understanding of Darwinian evolution (survival of the fittest) has led to theories about the possible evolutionary value of some psychiatric disorders. A simplistic view would predict that all mental illnesses with a genetic component should lower survival and ought to die out. ‘Inclusive fitness’, however, assesses the evolutionary value of a characteristic not simply on whether it helps that individual to survive but whether it makes it more likely that their offspring will survive. Richard Dawkins’s 1976 book The Selfish Gene gives convincing explanations of the evolutionary advantages of group support and altruism when individuals sacrifice themselves for others. A range of speculative hypotheses have since been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of various behaviour differences and mental illnesses. Many of these draw on ethological games-theory (i.e. the benefits of any behaviour can only be understood in the context of the behaviour of other members of the group). So depression might be seen as a safe response to ‘defeat’ in a hierarchical group because it makes the individual withdraw from conflict while they recover. Mania, conversely, with its expansiveness and increased sexual activity, is proposed as a response to success in a hierarchical tussle promoting the propagation of that individual’s genes. Changes in behaviour that look like depression and hypomania can be clearly seen in primates as they move up and down the pecking order that dominates their lives. The habitual isolation and limited need for social contact of individuals with schizophrenia has been rather imaginatively proposed as adaptive to remote habitats with low food supplies (and also a protection against the risk of infectious diseases and epidemics). Evolutionary psychology will undoubtedly increasingly influence psychiatric thinking – many of our disorders fit poorly into a classical ‘medical model’. Already it has helped establish a less either–or approach to the discussion. It is, however, a highly controversial area – not so much around mental disorders but in relation to social behaviour and particularly to gender specific behaviour. Here it is often interpreted as excusing a very male-orientated, exploitative worldview. Luckily that is someone else’s battle.

The Bad Dad thing usually works. Hellions are big on pecking orders and I have to remind them regularly who’s at the top. Now they need a pat on the head from Good Dad before things go all Hansel and Gretel and I end up in the oven.

Nobody a writer ever loved is dead.

A few weeks ago,” Degeneret said with a snort of contempt, “a no-brains tourist drove into the farm too quickly and killed the mother of those six ducklings. Usually that’s the end for the little ones. The others peck them to death. But that old bird took care of the motherless chicks. Let them join her brood”. “Oh, I see.” “Non, non, madame. That duck will live a full life. I will not kill her. For what? A liver? I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Imagine. A duck showing more kindness than a human being. I can’t have that.

Princes have far more toys than they need.

Royal[s] can't manage on their own.

But just for a moment they were caught in the grip of this place. They felt the weight of its history, and mystery. So did I. The paper was loose and peeling on the walls. I wondered how many layers you'd have to scrape away until you came to the time when these old people were young. If they ever were. I wondered how quiet you'd have to be to hear the voices of those times.

He spent so many years in first grade, they named the desk for him. I felt the town tighten around my throat. "But as the saying goes, if you can't get justice, Mrs. Dowdel remarked, get even." Asked for a final word on the subject, Mrs. Dowdel said: "Keep off my property. You know who you are. The next ghost you see could be you." I haven't missed a funeral since the great flu epidemic. A good funeral makes the whole week go better. ( said by old lady in 1958 ) Fiction isn't what "was". It's "what if". And a novelist is one who believes that real life can always be improved upon.