Meindert Dejong Quotes

Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle. ~ Leonard S. Marcus

The restlessness and the longing, like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train. Except that the longing isn't really in the whistle - it is in you. ~ Meindert DeJong

If you just go on dreaming then it stays a dream and becomes stale and dead. But first to dream and then to do isn't that the way to make a dream come true ~ Meindert DeJong

There's no fool
​like an illiterate fool. ~ A.J. DeJong

The bookworm catches the early bird! ~ A.J. DeJong

The pen can be just as dangerous as a sword... At least while walking. ~ A.J. DeJong

A Book in the hand is worth two in the bush. ~ A.J. DeJong

I always said I'm just an instrument; I'm transparent, like a medium, the language passes through me. Which is a bit like saying I'm a recording device, I start and I go. I had a real connection to ongoing, language production in real time. ~ Constance Dejong

Practice makes legibility! ~ A.J. DeJong

If you teach a kid to read, they'll have the potential teach themselves anything. ~ A.J. DeJong