Sue Halpern Quotes

You know what I can't stand?" Kit said as they passed five carts of books that needed to be reshelved. "I can't stand the words "reading for pleasure." All these parents--most of whom haven't read a single book since high school, unless maybe they picked up THE DA VINCE CODE--drag their kids in here every summer and say, 'Find something to read for pleasure,' which just means that most of the time the message these kids are getting is that reading is not pleasurable. Do you see how that works? It's like reading is a punishment. I hate that.

...the reward for getting through life is getting life itself.

It's stupid, really," I began again. "But it was this thing I read someplace, and it really got to me. It said that a dictionary is every book ever written and every book that will be written, just in a different order. And it seemed magical. You could own every book just by owning one book. I loved that. And I just had to have it,

A culture that values only what has succeeded before, where the first rule of success is that there must be something 'measured' and counted, is not a culture that will sustain alternatives to market-driven 'creativity.

Everyone's life is an unfolding story, and all stories have good guys and bad guys, and all stories have conflicts and resolutions, and all stories--if they are interesting--have drama.

I realize no one thinks being a librarian is as awesome as being a neurosurgeon, but I always thought I was doing something valuable, putting books in the hands of readers. Books can save lives, too. I really believe that.

I don't think she's being mysterious on purpose. It's like she can't help it. She's not shy--she'll talk to anyone--and she's not exactly distant, but even so, she's unreachable, as if there's an invisible fence around her, or a force field the repels whatever gets too close.

Do you stop reading a book because you don't want to watch the characters you like turn out to be unlikable, or the ones with which you identify denied the happy ending you believe they deserve?

…goodness is ours to dispense. It's a currency that each of us gets to invent and denominate. David's had pictures of Chopin and Keith Richards on it. Mine had my dog.

Somewhere in the unfolding story, something is going to happen that will change everything that happens after it.

I already told you a ghost story," she said at last. "The one where the wife was invisible to the husband and the truth of the marriage was invisible to her.

Trauma is not just one thing.

And most, like me, were drawn to the miracle of the blank page and how, when seeded with letters, it blossomed into words and sentences and paragraphs and stories.

It is essential not only to the souls of painters and poets, who thrive in solitude, but to the rest of us, too
individuals whose canvas is our lives.

If we are lucky, we get to live very long and healthy lives. If we are even luckier, we will be astonished by the sight of blue jays all the way through.

Freedom, he was learning, was not a set point, like the temperature at which water freezes, but something mutable, a moving target.

People who don't think the rules apply to them, Kit was beginning to learn, are surprised and offended when others don't recognize and honor their exemption.

Trusting each other is the beginning of a certain secular faith, a faith that allows us to live in families and communities and nations. Democracy, above all other forms of government, requires this faith ...

But it's a little like that children's book, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, but in reverse: if you're not loved for who you are, you cease to be real. Definitely for the other person, and maybe for yourself, too.

I think it's possible that when you think that the future might bring great sadness, you become more generous that you ever has been before, so you can carry other people's happiness with you.

What you're thinking of as the end of the story now, is only the end of the chapter.