E.L. Konigsburg

“Jamie: The only kind of deal that I can make is with money, and we haven't got any of that.Mrs. Frankweiler: You are very poor indeed if that is the only kind of deal you can make”

“I prefer not to.”

“He also learned to regard each port of call as part of the journey and not as destination. Every voyage begins when you do.”

“...just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.”

“Oh, well,' Mrs. Zender continued, 'Mother always said that Mr. Zender had other talents. He was good looking, and I think Mother put looking good right up there with the harpsichord, an instrument that has limited performance time and requires a great deal of maintenance.”

“Peter took a deep breath. 'Really, Mother! Anyone who blows pink bubble in front of a Picasso Blue painting should be arrested.”

“Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts.”

“I made myself a glass of chocolate milk using enough syrup for three normal glasses. I also made myself four peanut butter crackers. Then I walked out the living room door to our terrace. The trees were coming! New green was all over ... green so new that it was kissing yellow.”

“A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry.”

“Blue peter.”

“Sometimes we even have to risk making fools of ourselves.”

“I've been the oldest child since before you were born”

“What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn't mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time-- especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.”

“I am a passenger on the spaceship Earth.”

“There's something nice and safe about having money.”

“How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence. ”

“Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides. ”

“I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.”

“The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary.”

“They called themselves The Souls. They told Ms. Olinski that they were The Souls before they were a team, but she told them that they were a team as soon as they became The Souls. Then after a while, teacher and team agreed that they were arguing chicken-or-egg. Whichever way it began--chicken-or-egg, team-or-The Souls--it definitely ended with an egg. Definitely, an egg.”

“The eyes are the windows of the soul.... If someone was to look into your eyes, what would you want them to see?”

“They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.”

“Every now and then, a person must do something simply because he wants to, because it seems to him worth doing. And that does not make it worthless or a waste of time.”

“Jake knew that his mother had a tendency to mistake rules, her rules, for principles. She did not bend because she did not have enough confidence to know when or how far. She did not listen well because one ear was always otherwise engaged - either listening to what she herself had just said or what she would say next.”

“Uncle had learned long ago that obeying a rule in fact but not in spirit was very hard on people who say we for I and who do not allow dogs on their premises.”

“I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.”

“How dare he fall in love with his own wife! -Salai”

“Jamie, you know, you could go clear around the world and still come home wondering if the tuna fish sandwiches at Chock Full O'Nuts still cost thirty-five cents.”

“Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.”

“Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That's the hardest thing to find.”

“Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space -- it makes connections.”

“Because way down deep they know that civilized people have to preserve rare birds.”

“I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.”

“I don't think there is any feeling I like more than the one that someone is glad to see me. —Connor Kane”

“Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.”

“By the time they get to 6th grade honor roll students won't risk making a mistake, and sometimes to be successful, you have to risk making mistakes.”

“I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.”

“Five minutes of planning are worth fifteen minutes of just looking.”

“Both Jamie and Claudia had acquired a talent for being near but never part of a group. (Some people, Saxonberg, never learn to do that all their lives, and some learn it all too well.)”

“Flattery is as important a machine as the lever, isn't it, Saxonberg? Give it a proper place to rest, and it can move the world.”

“Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.”

“Never have a long conversation with anyone who says "between you and I.”

“Going to school- picking an appleGetting an education- eating it”

“Ninety percent of who you are is invisible." - Mrs. Zender”

“Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.”