Katherine Hannigan

“I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and filled myself up with the breeze from the valley. Then I let it out slow so it could get back to its travels, with a little bit of me added to it.”

“In the book, hummin bins made castles, and towers up to the sky. They tamed the animals and took care of them. And hummin bins helped each other. They were always good."When I was done, Ma asked, 'Delly, what are hummin bins?' 'They're like people, but better,' I said. Then I told her, 'When I grow up, I'm going to live with the hummin bins,' and she smiled."But Galveston grabbed the book, 'Let me see that,' she said, and started laughing. 'This says human beings. There's no such things as hummin bins.'"'Ma, is it true?' I asked, and she nodded. 'How come you didn't tell me?' I cried."'I liked the hummin bins better, too,' she said." ..."RB's right, Ferris Boyd. You are a hummin bin." Her eyeballs were wet, like they were swimming.It was quiet, then, till RB's soft cloud voice said, "You're a hummin bin, too, Delly.”

“It wasn't till they were on the bridge that Delly asked RB, "So, Ferris Boyd's your favorite?" She didn't mind, mostly.RB answered so fast, though, she knew he wasn't fibbing. "She's my favorite friend," he told her. "You're my favorite everything.”

“Then I looked right at Mama, for the first time in what seemed like forever, and she wasn't looking at me, but into me. She was pulling me to her with her eyes, like she used to do. All of a sudden I could see the light that was Mama's shining out of her eyes. I couldn't help smiling at it.'Be careful,' my heart warned me.But I was having a hard time remembering that there as anything to be careful about. Because if I just looked at Mama's eyes...I could tell that the part of her I thought had gone away forever was still there and glowing, only from deep down inside her.”

“I know it's hard to not do well at something, and I know it's hard to need help.”

“When she'd read, her voice wrapped around my head and my heart, and it softened and lightened everything up. It put a pain in my hear that felt good.”

“...how do you run and play when you feel like there are bricks of the heaviest sadness weighing down every part of your body? How do you laugh and talk when there are no laughs left inside of you?”

“...sadness is a powerful foe, maybe harder to keep down than happiness...”

“...when your heart changes, you change, and you have to make new plans.”

“It will be alright.”

“I believe good plans are the best way to maximize fun, avoid disaster, and possibly, save the world. I spend a lot of my time making them.”

“...all of a sudden I felt filled up again, so that my heart might come up my throat. And I was thinking how that can come over you, out of nowhere, and if it wasn't such a fine feeling, it might almost be frightening. Like there's more love and good thoughts and powerful things inside of you than one body can hold.”

“I was saying the right things, but not the really true things.”

“We don't own the earth. We are the earth's caretakers...we take care of it and all the things on it. And when we're done with it, it should be left better than we found it.”

“There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too.”

“There is never enough time for fun.”

“And all the best words together couldn't hold the happiness.”

“My insides started itching and my feet started hopping, one then the other,because they were 10 min. Past being ready to go. ”

“In the morning I'm like a snake in the spring: I need to lie out on a warm rock and let the sun sink into me before I can start wiggling around and get on with the day.”

“...if a child waited to speak until all the grown-ups settled down and gave her some room to say her piece, the most important things would never get said.”

“Apologizing is like spring cleaning.”

“It thought about the magic that happens when you tell a story right, and everybody who hears it not only loves the story, but they love you a little bit, too, for telling it so well. Like I love Ms. Washington, in spite of myself, the first time I heard her. When you hear somebody read a story well, you can't help but think there's some good inside them, even if you don't know them.”

“I closed my eyes, put my right hand on top of the book, and passed it lightly across the cover. It was cool and smooth like a stone from the bottom of the brook, and it stilled me. A whole other world is inside there, I thought to myself, and that's where I want to be.”

“I just loved making words into stories by the sound of my voice.”