Rebecca Stead Quotes

I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.

I like the idea of a world, even within a big giant city, where you're not anonymous. You have an identity, and that's an identity that's known just sort of by shopkeepers. I felt that as a kid, and I loved it.

Like when that man was running down Broadway stark naked and we all had to eat in the cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.

I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.

You can have it all, but you can't have it all at once.

Common sense is just a name for the way we're used to thinking.

But every person has to learn to accept what has happened in the past. Without bitterness. Or there is no point in continuing with life.

What's the burn scale?

During the week,I'm really focused on writing and output. Sunday is a day when I really try not to write at all.

I try to write about internal experience versus the external self. I like to present ideas, but not package them neatly.

Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.

Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.

There's this trouble with books for me because I'm terrible at thinking of titles. The truth is, even with the titles that I've landed on in the end, they always feel wrong. I think it's because of this whole problem of having to package your book in a certain way.

It is, actually," Sherm said, looking her straight in the eyes, the way he had during the intruder drill. "Best thing ever.

This is the world of pretend. We are artists and we are servants of the stage, and I take both jobs very seriously. As artists, we work as a collective - all for one and one for all. As servants, we work for thos who venture out alone, otherwise known as performers.

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

If I'm afraid of someone on the street, I'll turn to him (it's always a boy) and say, "Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?" This is my way of saying to the person, "I see you as a friend, and there is no need to hurt me or take my stuff. Also, I don't even have a watch and I am probably not worth mugging." So far, it's worked like gangbusters ... And I've discovered that most people I'm afraid of are actually very friendly.

so mom got the postcard today

I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind? -Sherm

The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'

As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.

On Sunday, I think the most important thing for me is to just turn my brain off. The idea of not trying is the key, because that's where you're relaxed enough to let your brain make new connections.

My grandfather used to say that everyone alive has already beaten the craziest odds, just being born. Like one in a trillion. Your parents could have had a million different kids, but they had you. And before that could happen, your parents had to be born themselves, and their parents had to be born.

I had watched them trade best friends, start wars, cry, trade back, make treaties, squeal and grab each other's arms in this fake-excited way, et cetera ...

Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.

Maybe it should just make you feel lucky. Yeah, you were really lucky you didn't die after the accident. But you were a lot luckier to be born in the first place. So if you're here for a reason, maybe we all are.

Marcus's face lit up. 'Stop - I see your problem! You're thinking that time exists on the diamonds themselves. It doesn't. Each moment - each diamond - is like a snapshot.' 'A snapshot of what?' 'Of everything, everywhere! There's no time in a picture, right? It's the jumping, from one diamond to the next, that we call time, but like I said, time doesn't really exist. Like that girl just said, a diamond is a moment, and all the diamonds on the ring are happening at the same time. It's like having a drawer full of pictures.' 'On the ring,' I said. 'Yes! All the diamonds exist at once!' He looked triumphant.

Who's the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who's horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?

Dad is looking at the bookshelves, deep in thought, deciding which book should go where. Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine.

Tab's mom said that when people reached out to hurt your feelings, it was because they secretly felt they deserved to be talked to that way. She said that they had 'long, hard roads ahead' and that you should just wish them well.

And books all over the floor, some stocked in piles, some worn-looking, some brand-new, some splayed upside down, some sliding off the pink bedside table next to the lamp with the orange fabric shade.

Thank you for showing me your planet.

Love is when you like someone so much that you can't just call it "like," so you have to call it "love.

Isn't that the whole idea?' I asked. 'It's supposed to stop them from being criminals!' She shook her head. 'That's not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren't even people anymore.

While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau's mouth, I'm looking at the false tongue poster and I'm kind of wishing it wasn't wrong. There's something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there's a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be.

Let's say everyone has nine thousand things about themselves," Em had explained to Tab and Bridge in sixth grade, "and say two people fall in love because it seems like all their things match up. But what they don't know is that only like a thousand of their things actually match up. My mom says most people who get married don't even know those other eight thousand things about themselves yet. So it could happen to anyone.

Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Anyway,' Sherm said quietly, 'people fake stuff all the time.

I do try to write in ways that reflect reality, and I think that reality is rarely simple.

When she was eight years old, Bridget Barsamian woke up in a hospital, where a doctor told her she shouldn't be alive. It's possible that he was complimenting her heart's determination to keep pumping when half her blood was still uptown on 114th Street, but more likely he was scolding her for roller-skating into traffic the way she had.

My kids really like food, and they like to cook, so it's a lot of fun to shop with them.

I wish I could see what would have hapenned if I hadn't told. You told me once that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two. So now there's a universe in which I kept my mouth shut. But I can't see what it looks like.

It soaked into me like water into sand, fast and heavy-making.

I like to write about questions that interest me, not the conclusions I've come to.

From age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses, going to the store. I really wanted to write about that: the independence that's a little bit scary but also a really positive thing in a lot of ways.

I sneaked a little bunch of grapes, which I love but can't ever have, because Mom doesn't like the way the grape pickers are treated in California and she refuses to buy them. *

Many of the books on my list are, in my opinion, amazing. Some I didn't like. But I give them all five stars, because stars make people - including me
happy.

Probably because I really love this bookmaking and storytelling world, I'd been thinking for years about the possibility of becoming a literary agent.

It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone's doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.

If you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy

Love is when your heart wraps around something and won't let go.

Sometimes your body feels like a cage for all the stuff inside. You paint your nails, braid your hair, and buy the right kind of jeans, but none of it is really about you.

I pictured the world. I pictured the world millions of years ago, with crazy clouds of gas everywhere, and volcanoes, and the continents bumping into each other and then drifting apart. Okay. Now life begins. … There are animals, then humans, looking almost all alike. There are tiny differences in color, the shape of the face, the tone of the skin. But basically they are the same. They create shelters, grow food, experiment. They talk; they write things down.

Now fast-forward. The earth is still making loops around the sun. There are humans all over the place, driving in cars and flying in airplanes. And then one day one human tells another human that he doesn't want to walk to school with her anymore.

'Does it really matter?' I asked myself.

It did.

I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.

[she used to say that] each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world – like a bride wears on her wedding day - except this kind of veil is invisible. we walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. the world is kind of blurry. we like it that way. but sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments – like there's a wind blowing it from our faces – and when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. we see all the beauty and cruelty and sadness and love, but mostly we are happy not to. some people learn to lift the veils themselves. then they don't have to depend on the wind anymore. ...it's just her way of saying that most of the time people get distracted by little stuff, and ignore the big stuff.

He nodded like he felt sorry for me and my stupid brain. 'I think that's probably because of your common sense. You can't accept the idea of arriving before you leave, the idea that every moment is happening at the same time, that it's us who are moving - ' Enough was enough.

Blue Team! It's what's for breakfast!

The guy is looney,' Belle said thoughtfully, 'but also generally polite. Polite is always worth something.

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.

I grew up mostly an only child. My dad remarried when I was a teenager. And then I had two stepbrothers. And then my dad had a second child. So I have a brother from the time I was 15. But I really grew up feeling like an only child.

Mostly what I try to do is build emotion. Only I'd prefer not to do it by telling you about emotion but by pushing that emotion down.

I don't know. I just feel stuck, like I'm afraid to take any steps, in case they're the wrong ones.

There was no black line separating Colorado from Utah. There was no black line between friendship and whatever might come next.

I think that kids are a wonderful, wonderful reader to have in your head.

I personally find the ideas that girls need to cover their shoulders in school a little bit strange ... when we're telling girls, you know, 'You have to cover your shoulders because otherwise you're a distraction to other people in your class,' probably something is wrong.

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don't cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It's a lose-lose situation.

Try really, really hard not to judge your own work too harshly.

Anyone who's familiar with my writing schedule knows that there is always plenty of time between books for me!

I did hit him for a reason,' he said. 'What you're talking about is a justification. I'm not saying it was the right thing to do. I'm just saying I did it for a reason. My own stupid reason.' I stared at him. 'So what was the reason?' He looked down and shrugged. 'Same reason I do most things. I wanted to see what would happen.

Em: I'm falling apart. That's what I'm trying to tell you
Bridge: You're not falling apart. You're scared.
Em: Isn't that the same thing?
Bridge: No

Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.

There was a boy in my building who was my best friend when I was growing up. There was also a mysterious person on my corner who we called the Laughing Man.

And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love.

Listening, you reflect that you are probably the worst person on the planet. But this is not exactly news.