Natalie Babbitt Quotes

I'm getting thirstier every minute. If it didn't hurt you, it won't hurt me. If my papa was here, he'd let me have some."
"You're not going to tell him about it, are you?" said Jesse. His face had gone very pale under its sunburn. He stood up and put a bare foot firmly on the pile of pebbles. "I knew this would happen sooner or later. Now what am I going to do?"
As he said this, there was a crashing sound among the trees and a voice called, "Jesse?"
"Thank goodness!" said Jesse, blowing out his cheeks in relief. "Here comes Ma and Miles. They'll know what to do."
And sure enough, a big, comfortable-looking woman appeared, leading a fat old horse, and at her side was a young man almost as beautiful as Jesse. It was Mae Tuck with her other son, Jesse's older brother. And at once, when she saw the two of them, Jesse with his foot on the pile of pebbles and Winnie on her knees beside him, she seemed to understand. Her hand flew to her bosom, grasping at the old brooch that fastened her shawl, and her face went bleak. "Well, boys," she said, "here it is. The worst is happening at last.

Tuck and me, we got each other," she said, "and that's a lot. The boys, now, they go their separate ways. They're some different, don't always get on too good. But they come home whenever the spirit moves, and every ten years, first week of August, they meet at the spring and come home together so's we can be a family again for a little while. That's why we was there this morning. One way or another, it all works out." She folded her arms and nodded, more to herself than to Winnie. "Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short," she said calmly. "You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time. Funny--we don't feel no different. Leastways, I don't. Sometimes I forget about what's happened to us, forget it altogether. And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We're plain as salt, us Tucks. We don't deserve no blessings--if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don't see how we deserve to be cursed, if it's a curse. Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes. Tuck, now, he's got a few other ideas, but I expect he'll tell you.

I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being.

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?

My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school!

For, through the twilight sounds of crickets and sighing trees, a faint, surprising wisp of music came floating to them and all three turned toward it, toward the wood.

The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.

I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread.

I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life.

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

Well, thought Winnie, crossing her arms on the windowsill, she was different. Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once.

Outside, the night seemed poised on tiptoe, waiting, waiting, holding its breath for the storm.

The only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure.

The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give.

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.

That's what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing.

They've really begun the war," he said to himself. "And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies!

Right after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy.

Dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.

You can't have living without dying.

You've got nothing that lasts, you know. That's not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy?

For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist.

Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life

And then his throat closed. For it was there. He had wanted it to be there, but now that he saw it, he was overcome with sadness.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.

He looked solid, like an oar, whereas Jesse - well, she decided, Jesse was like water: thin, and quick.

The first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for.

Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside.

The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world.

You really have to love words if you're going to be a writer, because as a writer, you certainly spend a lot of time with words.

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summer's day, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways.

I have always loved astronomy, and being an astronomer once lurked in the back of my mind. But I was never good at algebra. In fact, I flunked it twice in high school.

Mae Tuck must never go to the gallows. Whatever happened to the man in the yellow suit, Mae Tuck must not be hanged. Because if all they had said was true, then Mae, even if she were the cruelest of murderers and deserved to be put to death--Mae Tuck would not be able to die.

Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.
Tuck Everlasting

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.

The first week of August was long over. And now, though autumn was still some weeks away, there was a feeling that the year had begun its downward arc, that the wheel was turning again, slowly now, but soon to go faster, turning once more in its changeless sweep of change.

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.

Winnie had her own strong sense of rightness. She knew that she could always say, afterward, "Well, you never told me not to!" But how silly that would be! Of course it would never occur to them to include such a thing on their list of don'ts. She could hear them saying it, and almost smiled: "Now, remember, Winifred--don't bite your fingernails, don't interrupt when someone else is speaking, and don't go down to the jailhouse at midnight to change places with prisoners.

The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful - most of the time - of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't - not a bit of it - be true. And yet:

Life always seems to have worries, even if you own a big and beautiful house on the best street in town.

I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw.

There! The boys are in from the pond."
Winnie heard a burst of voices downstairs, and in a moment Miles and Jesse were climbing to the loft.
"Here, child," said Mae hastily. "Hide your eyes. Boys? Are you decent? What'd you put on to swim in? I got Winnie up here, do you hear me?"
"For goodness' sake, Ma," said Jesse, emerging from the stairwell. "You think we're going to march around in our altogether with Winnie Foster in the house?"
And Miles, behind him, said, "We just jumped in with our clothes on. Too hot and tired to shed 'em."
It was true. They stood there side by side with their wet clothes plastered to their skins, little pools of water collecting at their feet.
"Well!" said Mae, relieved. "All right. Find something dry to put on. Your pa's got supper nearly ready." And she hustled Winnie down the narrow stairs.

I can't help what I dream.

After that we went sort of crazy," said Jesse, grinning at the memory. "Heck, we was going to live forever. Can you picture what it felt like to find that out?"
"But then we sat down and talked it over…" said Miles.
"We're still talking it over," Jesse added.
"And we figured it'd be very bad if everyone knowed about that spring," said Mae. "We begun to see what it would mean." She peered at Winnie. "Do you understand, child? That water--it stops you right where you are. If you'd had a drink of it today, you'd stay a little girl forever. You'd never grow up, not ever."
"We don't know how it works, or even why," said Miles.
"Pa thinks it's something left over from--well, from some other plan for the way the world should be," said Jesse. "Some plan that didn't work out too good. And so everything was changed. Except that the spring was passed over, somehow or other. Maybe he's right. I don't know. But you see, Winnie Foster, when I told you before I'm a hundred and four years old, I was telling the truth. But I'm really only seventeen. And, so far as I know, I'll stay seventeen till the end of the world.

When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore.

The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.

I was more'n forty by then," said Miles sadly. "I was married. I had two children. But, from the look of me, I was still twenty-two. My wife, she finally made up her mind I'd sold my soul to the Devil. She left me. She went away and she took the children with her."
"I'm glad I never got married," Jesse put in.

He wasn't crazy. How could he be? He was just
amazing. But she was struck dumb. All she could do was stare at him.

Miles said softly, "Ma. We'll get you out right away."
"Sure, Ma," said Jesse.
"Don't worry about me none," said Mae in the same exhausted voice. "I'll make out."
"Make out?" exclaimed the constable. "You people beat all. If this feller dies, you'll get the gallows, that's what you'll get, if that's what you mean by make out.

You dont have to live forever just live.

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

Don't be afraid of death, rather the unlived life.

I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact.

We human beings do a lot of dumb things, and war is certainly the dumbest.

It goes on," Tuck repeated, "to the ocean. But this rowboat now, it's stuck. If we didn't move it out ourself, it would stay here forever, trying to get loose, but stuck. That's what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children.