Sally Gardner Quotes

The floor had become a sea and the bed a ship, seen from a great distance. I could hear their voices calling me from far away. It lasted a minute or less. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I did not. It was an image that came to haunt me, and I have often wondered what would have happened if I had done as I was told and left the silver shoes alone. Would everything then have been alright?

It's the fricking reality that destroys plans.

Wouldn't it be good if we could let teachers do what they do best - teach. Not judge each child on a series of standardized exams. Let schools embrace, not exclude, those like me with a different way of thinking.
Stop praising literacy with one hand and closing libraries with the other. Let librarians be free to do what they do best: encourage a lifelong love of reading in every child, even the ones without a hope of ever getting an A star.

I collect words
they are sweets in the mouth of sound.

As if the words came not from her but from the breeze.

What are you on?' said AJ. 'Leon's mum has died and you are determined to add to the total sum of misery by going out with the girlfriend of the nastiest piece of manhood that was ever assembled in the factory of life ...

The Marquis looked very grave and replied, 'I knew, of course, the minute whalebone corsets went out of fashion that things were coming to a pretty pass.

Furniture, my good husband," she said, her mouth full of food, "that be too pretty is without pure thought. Tables with turned and carved legs only encourage the devil to dine."
My father stared at her, bewildered.
This house needs to be made ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, for when he returns to our fair city and takes his rightful place as king, he'll be needing a good meal in a godly home. Do not you agree, husband?"
My father was speechless. Maud, in no way put off by his silence, said, "He will be very hungry. It has been a long time since the Last Supper.

Well, you could have knocked me sideways with a feather.

It had struck me that the world was full of holes, holes which you could fall into, never to be seen again. I couldn't understand the difference between disappearance and death. Both seemed the same to me, both left holes. Holes in your heart holes in your life.

This emotion called love. It is wrapped up in time, measured by years. The more I see of humans the more complicated love becomes. It is not an exchange of goods. It has no price. it is not a simple connection to other beings. Love is much deeper, its tendrils reach into the bad and the good in humans. I don't believe we should give up on this project. I cannot return until I learn how to love.

Our story is over, though in its end lies its beginning.

You too are cast in sadness thicker than stone, heavier than water,' she says. 'It ties you, like me, to this leaden earth.'
I lean forward and kiss her.
'Only in dreams,' she says, 'can we be ourselves, uncaged, wild of spirit. Here I am free to climb a tree and find a boy with eyes as sad as mine.

No matter how bad things looked, Gramps had always seemed a giant to me. He wasn't made up of any monstrous parts.

Gramps had the radio on, tuned to the only station that the authorities allowed us mere lava mites to listen to. Dripple for the workers of the Motherland. They sang it loud, they sang it clear: "And once those feet did tread upon silver sand And footprints deep marked out new moons of Motherland Which all salute with upraised hand." I went upstairs and put on my school uniform. Every part of me dead. Limp. Dead.

Doubt is a great worm in a crispy, red apple.

Kallioviski gave a thin smile as he thought, Oh world, beware of clever sheep. They are the truly dangerous ones, for they understand the stupidity of the flock, know just how easy it is to lead the people to slaughter.

I had never been interested in boys and had no notion that I ever would, seeing being in love and loving as a great tangle in which you could lose your head as well as your heart. Yet standing there that afternoon looking at the young man. I could well see how such knots in life were made.

My captain once said that you meet people in your life who you believe will be your companions on the road, only to discover that they fall by the wayside. Others who you meet without design climb mountains with you,

You are my beginning; you will be my end; in the middle lies our future.

I sat at the very back of the class - the blackboard could have been in another country. The words were just circus horses dancing up and down. At least, they never stayed still long enough for me to work out what they were saying. The

My stepmother was no beauty. She was round and squat with a face not unlike a potato that had been scrubbed.

Few people can claim they are born into the right period of history. Most of us have to make do with the times we find ourselves in.

In another country where the buildings don't stop rising until they pinthe clouds to the sky.

If my soul was filled with anything, then it was dust and the ashes of possibilities.

But that's her problem, not mine. No, my problem is elephantine. How do you eat an elephant, sir? Bit by tiny bit.

You make sense of a world that is senseless. You gave me space boots so that I could walk on other planets. Without you, I'm lost. There's no left, no right. No tomorrow, only miles of yesterdays. It doesn't matter what happens now because I've found you. That's why I'm here. Because of you. You who I love. My best friend. My brother. Hector

He stroked Sido's cheek and bent down to kiss her, whispering what his heart had always known, what he had never said before to anyone. 'I love you, I always will.

There are too many ghosts walking this earth. They weigh heavy on the living.

Am driving us home to Mrs. Lush in her shiny kitchen with a checked tablecloth in a house where the grass looks as if it's been Hoovered. You see, only in the land of Croca-Colas does the sun shine in Technicolor. Life lived at the end of the rainbow.

He coughs. Not a good sound. Too deep, too full of coffins.
Why is mankind so fucking cruel?
Why?

Stay calm. Don't go getting moon mad. Moon sad.
Moon morons.

He says nothing but I know he is listening. Words are the only medicine I have.
'You make sense of a world that is senseless. You gave me space boots so that I could walk on other planets. Without you, I'm lost. There's no left, no right. No tomorrow, only miles of yesterdays. It doesn't matter what happens now because I've found you. That's why I'm here. Because of you. You who I love. My best friend. My brother.

But maybe all it needs is a moment to change the course of history.