Cynthia Kadohata Quotes

But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good. Those clouds made you dream big. Not big like you could make a lot of money or like you could have a good job. Bigger than those things. It was complicated. I mean, big like you were part of the sky, which also made you feel small.

My sister and I practiced our howling and barking so we would be able to talk to our dogs if our mother ever let us get any.

I was worried that her spirit was watching me every time I cried. I was worried that if she saw me crying, she would be very unhappy and maybe she wouldn't be able to leave the earth the way she was supposed to. So even though I wanted her to keep watching me, I wished she would forget about me and never see my crying and never worry about me anymore, even if that meant I was now alone.

I almost never slept deeply anymore
as soon as she said my name, I always sat up immediately, no matter how tired I was.

Sometimes I thought about my future, because Lynn said I should. She said it was hard to tell at this point, but someday, if I didn't go to Africa to study animals, I might be a beautiful genius tennis player. I didn't worry about it one way or another. I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies. The lady who used to live down the street could take all of her top teeth out of her mouth. She wasn't allowed to eat chewy candy. I could eat any kind of candy I wanted because I still had my baby teeth. If they rotted, I would simply grow more teeth. That was pretty great.

Usually while I lay in bed, I liked to think of new things I could do for Lynnie. Maybe I could let her try my pillow to see if she liked it better. Or I could bring her a new cracker she'd never tried. Or maybe I could even find a new book that she'd never heard of and read it to her, even though she had heard of every book in the world. That night I knew that nothing I could do would make her feel better. So I lay in bed and listened to her mournful noise and didn't feel love or hate or anger or anything at all except despair.

The thing about luck is that it's like a fever. You can take fever meds and lie in bed and drink chicken broth and sleep seventeen hours in a row, but basically your fever will break when it wants to break.

In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction.

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.

I try to find my deepest, often hidden feelings about what's working and what's not. This is difficult because I do lie to myself without being aware that that's what I'm doing.

I have so much respect for people who do blue-collar work because I come from that background myself.

And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good.

Sometime it very inconvenient to tell the truth.

Was I good or bad or mixed or what? And was the way I acted every day the real me, or was the real me somewhere so deep that I would never even know it?

I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies.

You could see the roads crisscrossing over the fields. When cars went by, far away, the beams were so bright they seemed to be ropes of light pulling the cars behind.

Why would a book in which hardly anything happened for most of the time eat at me so much? It was the weirdest thing

The jungle changes a man.

It sounded so weird when people called shoyu "soy sauce." It made it sound like Tabasco or something instead of the clean and perfect thing that it was.

At the time I was writing 'Weedflower,' my friend Naomi Hirahara was writing a book about Japanese-American flower farmers. She knew quite a few elderly farmers and put me in touch with four or five of them who had been in camps during WWII. Some, like my father, were reluctant to talk about their experiences.

My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.

For me, books are music for my mind and my imagination. When I am stuck in something I'm writing, I simply read my way out of being stuck. You can never waste time reading.

Suddenly, Mr. Parker's shoulders drooped and he gave up, mumbling, Happy wife, happy life.

On the forty-ninth day after Lynn's death I opened all the windows in the alcove, even though it was raining. I closed my eyes and tried to feel Lynn's spirit. A leaf suddenly fell off the magnolia tree and flew in the wind and hit the screen right in front of me. I believe that leaf was a sign from Lynn.

'Weedflower' was already in the copyediting phase when I heard about the Newbery award, so it didn't really influence my writing of that book, but since then, I have become more aware of having an audience.

I felt like I didn't understand a single thing in the whole world. I didn't understand a single person. I didn't even understand myself.

You feel almost a part of the wheat when you're sitting in a combine.

I love writing about people on the road.

Nothing wrong with gullible. How you be happy if not gullible?

Lynn said, "The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time. What did I just say?"
"The sky is special."
"The ocean is like that too, and people's eyes."
She turned her head toward me and waited. I said, "The ocean and people's eyes are special too."
That's how I learned about eyes, sky, and ocean: the three special, deep, colored, see-through things. I turned to Lynnie. Her eyes were deep and black, like mine.

When she first died, I felt sorry about all the pills I'd given that made her feel so miserable. But now I didn't feel so many regrets. Lynn wanted her life. I thought she was willing to suffer if she could still taste her food, if she could still talk about the sea, if she could still feel a breeze across her face, and even if she still could argue with her crazy sister!

For everything in my life, I would ask, Why? Why didn't the Chinese lady have teeth? Probably it was because she didn't brush them enough. I asked myself why we had to move to Georgia. It was because my father needed to work at this hatchery so he could support us better. Why did I kind of like that boy? Because he was kind of cute. And why was Lynnie sick? Why? There was no answer to that.