Ann Rinaldi Quotes

I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again.

... There was something regal about her. She carried herself like she was wearing pink moire. And that powerless complexion glowed. Watching her, it came to me that she must have some Yankee strength that didn't need frippery.

Sometimes it take courage to leave.

As a child growing up in World War II, I was very moved and stirred by what was going on, but I distanced myself from history. I regarded history as just one more subject.

I earn my own respect," I told Emilie. "I don't ride the coattails of someone else.

There are different kinds of love, Sarah. I feel one kind of love for your father. A special kind. Another kind for Warren. And still a different kind for you children.' She smiled at me. 'Heaven rue the day we can't feel love for one another. I wouldn't want to live in such a world, would you?

When I write I am the real me.

My heart stopped beating, I know it did. Hearts do that sometimes, for just a beat or two. Then they start up again. But they never regain those missed beats, and nothing is ever the same afterwards. Life proceeds to a different cadence, and never again as harmonious as before

He is not a punishing God, Lizzy. That is the mistake most people make, thinking He sits with an account book and a big fist, waiting to punish us. He is not a wrathful God but a loving God who made each of us and loved us since we were in our mother's womb

Because I had already resolved that if you're afraid of love, your heart will break anyway, only in not half so nice a fashion as it does when you let somebody love you.

There are forces in the world that we cannot see, and they are for good as well as for evil. And I sensed, with an inner certainty, that the forces of good were far more powerful than the forces of evil.

Words said can never be recalled. So it is best, oftimes, not to speak too quickly. Yet words left unsaid are worse. We wear them like weights around our hearts.

What it love, you ask. Dear child, love is like the light and there are two kinds, the bursting fireworks of the moment and the solid, fixed stars that sometimes become obscured in the heavens, but are always there, year after year, for a lifetime. You must experience the first in order to appreciate the second.

The most important thing we ever have to learn in life is to live with our choices.

Two women, one nigra and one white, whose voices were part of me, whose hands had comforted, soothed, and taught. One a pine-knot torch and the other a scented beeswax candle against the darkness of my ignorance and fear. Both gone.

He had to put down the sacks of sugar and coffee then. Because, though he could hold off a mob at the depot with no trouble, even he couldn't kiss a girl with his arms full of contraband.

I find American girls have a spirit and honesty about them that is most refreshing.

The people who founded America, who fought for its freedom, did not look to anyone else to get them out of their troubles. They took matters into their own hands and answered only to God and their peers. In today's world, sacrifice and hardship are not in the everyday language, and instant gratification is foremost.

I thanked him and said goodnight. I left him there and went into the house. Maria was playing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Her face was a map I'd like to trace. I'd love to see where it would take me. And I'd love to see where she had been.

I think he is just an old man who still believes in his country, his old Germany. we all wanted a new Germany, but not at the cost of this madman, Hitler. Your grandpa can't be blamed for loving his old Germany.

I will stand by you. You must not be afraid. This is a brave land, Susanna, founded by brave people who never shrank from their duty or their vision of freedom. But this land has a future only if each of us stands up for what is right when it is given us to do so.

You are a man without a heart, Dr. Leddell.
And you, Mary Cooper, are a meddler. A woman can be forgiven for many transgressions but not that.
I have been called worse. And by people I hold in more esteem than you.
Ha! I pity the poor man unfortunate enough to marry you someday. He writes his own ticket to hell.
If he does, then I'll make that hell as pleasant a place for him as I know how. But I won't deceive him and tell him it's heaven, then stoke the fires behind his back and cover it all with the scent of lilacs.

Little things about the Pilgrims surprised me. For instance, the fact that the first duel in America was fought at Plymouth by two teenaged boys over a girl. The life the Pilgrims led in Holland before coming to America also surprised me.

I know now why God gave us babies. They require constant attention, of course. They make messes and disturb the peace, but their cuteness and smiles are something the only reminder of God we have in the house.

The house was so quiet, as if everyone had been spirited out of sight. I had a feeling of moving through time itself. I saw myself as a small, scurrying animal rushing into my future. But I was not afraid.

Doing good doesn't always make you feel good. I don't care what they tell you in church.

A person has to be strong in life. A person must practice strength, even if they don't feel it.

Most of our miseries we bring on ourselves. And they're the sum of our own stupidity.

When a woman's face is wrinkled
And her hairs are sprinkled,
With gray, Lackaday!
Aside she's cast,
No one respect will pay;
Remember, Lasses, remember.
And while the sun shines make hay:
You must not expect in December,
The flowers you gathered in May.

War takes a terrible toll on people, on families. And if war doesn't, then just ordinary life does. It changes them forever.

Because that's how intelligent people conduct themselves. They allow for each other's differences.

So we gave the afternoon some sanity after all and I wonder, Uncle Andrew, is life sane, as we tried to make it? Or is it insanity, as it was yesterday on the Gerard plantation? And why don't more people try to make it sane?
Or if it is full of sanity for them, why do they try to rip that sanity to pieces and impose their form of insanity? Can you help me understand?