Andrew Clements Quotes

We both hang up, but it's like there's still a connection. I can feel it.

And it feels good.

A singing goat is like reading books, I love goats and dinosaurs.-Albert Einstein

We just have to go to that next class, read that next chapter, help that next person. You simply have to do that next good thing, and before you know it, you're living a good life.

And then I see what she means. Because I did have to tell her, just like she had to tell me all of this. I had to trust her. Sometimes you have to tell someone else what it's like. Because if you don't, you'll go nuts.

I have my own story, and I love my story, but I know I can't tell it alone, not now. Because stories have centers, but they don't have edges. No boundaries.

I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing. And once, when I got an assignment back, she'd written: 'This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!' That made a big impression on me.

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.

When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read - with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature.

Books and people are hard to compare.

who says dog means dog?

The highest praise is when a kid says, 'This book feels so real; this could have happened at my school.'

This item belongs to Mrs. Granger and she may call it anything she likes.
-With love from Nicholas Allen

But fear doesn't need doors and windows. It works from the inside.

I get wonderful letters from kids and teachers. I must have the best readers in the world.

(...) if you are smart enough, you can look at anything and think of twenty possible ways that is might be useful at some point in the future, so you just keep it.

The dictionary is like a time capsule of all of human thinking ever since words began to be written down. And exploring where words have come from can increase your understanding of the words themselves and expand your understanding of how to use the words, and all of this change happens in your thinking when you read the words.

My sister called her pillow a pilgo. My brother called his pacifier his nimma. But I don't think I was much of a word generator myself.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive?

All the kids loved lunchtime. But the awful part of lunch was the eating part - school food.

There's so much made of the exceptional and the celebrity, the famous, and the wannabees.

It's about 65 degrees, so it feels like when the air conditioner is up on high. I can bear it, so I'm going for a walk. Today. Right now. In the sunshine. Because I can.
Because I want to. Because I'm not going to just sit around and wait for stuff to happen anymore. I'm still me, and I have a life. It's a weird life, but it's still mine.
It's still mine.

Aha. The mom doesn't know. She's fishing. This next part has to be just right, or I'm blacklisted by the mother and hated by the daughter. The first would be an inconvenience; the second would be a tragedy.

Okay heres the deal a whole day of NO TALKING IN SCJHOOL.Not in class,not in the halls, not on the plaground nowhere.No talking at all. And its a contest- BOYS AGAINST GIRLS. Whichever side talks less, wins.

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.

Dave couldn't remember the last time a grownup had apologized to him.

And I love Jane Austen's use of language too
the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom in my mind. Beethoven does the same thing with his cadence and phrasing and structure. It's a fact: Jane Austen is musical. And so's Yeats. And Wordsworth. All the great writers are musical.

Darkness is only light's absence.
-Things that Are

I am constantly telling my own story to myself, and these days that's about all the narrative flow I can handle.

I glance into the faces of all these people out for a Sunday stroll, but I'm not seeing eyes and noses and mouths. I'm seeing stories. Every person has a story. All the hopes and dreams. And fears. And secrets.
In every face.