Richard Peck Quotes

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived. ~ Richard Peck

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school. ~ Richard Peck

Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie. ~ Richard Peck

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready. ~ Richard Peck

At last she said, Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They're like a pack of hound dogs. They'll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke. ~ Richard Peck

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself. ~ Richard Peck

And don't look for anything out of the law around here," she said. "The Cowgills and the Leapers is kin to the sheriff. No justice in these parts. It's every man for hisself."
"But as the saying goes, if you can't get justice," Mrs. Dowdel remarked, "get even. ~ Richard Peck

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about. ~ Richard Peck

A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed. ~ Richard Peck

So there is some justice in this world, though not a lot. ~ Richard Peck

We write by the light of every story we have ever read. ~ Richard Peck

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep. ~ Richard Peck

Never worry about a book corrupting a child. Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books. ~ Richard Peck

Nobody but a reader becomes a writer. ~ Richard Peck

Grandma, how old is she?"
"Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck. ~ Richard Peck

I read.. because one life is not enough ~ Richard Peck

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city. ~ Richard Peck

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move. ~ Richard Peck

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple. ~ Richard Peck

If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one. ~ Richard Peck

But later when I was a teacher, an English teacher naturally, my students preferred fiction to reality. They were in junior high, and so they preferred ANYTHING to reality. ~ Richard Peck

Conformity is the enemy of friendship ~ Richard Peck

Hayseeds we might be, but we meant to be informed hayseeds. ~ Richard Peck

September 11
We thought we'd outdistanced history
Told our children it was nowhere near;
Even when history struck Columbine,
It didn't happen here.
We took down the maps in the classroom,
And when they were safely furled,
We told the young what they wanted to hear,
That they were immune from a menacing world.
But history isn't a folded-up map,
Or an unread textbook tome;
Now we know history's a fireman's child
Waiting at home alone. ~ Richard Peck

A solider must leave someone behind,' she said. 'What men do best is walk away from women. Wars are handy for that. ~ Richard Peck

The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.'
Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy's son could have been my dad. ~ Richard Peck

Only the nonreader fears books. ~ Richard Peck

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you. ~ Richard Peck

Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother. ~ Richard Peck

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized. ~ Richard Peck

I'm so far gone that I'm telling the truth. It sounds like a foreign language. ~ Richard Peck

The sobs came then, faster than she could swallow. A teacher dares not cry, not a real teacher. ~ Richard Peck

Besdies, to turn me ladylike might have rendered me useless and possibly ornamental. ~ Richard Peck

At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. . . . She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do. ~ Richard Peck

They'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they? ... Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks. ~ Richard Peck

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world. ~ Richard Peck

She said that time was like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. She meant you could never go back. But of course we had. She'd taken me back. ~ Richard Peck

We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their water. ~ Richard Peck

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing. ~ Richard Peck

Then a lady flounced up and perched on the seat opposite. She had a full bird on the wing sewn to the crown of her hat, and she was painted up like a circus pony, so we took her to be from Chicago. ~ Richard Peck

She had eyes in the back of her heart. ~ Richard Peck

This was something Grandma Tilly couldn't understand
how war promises a boy it can make a man out of him. ~ Richard Peck

We'd gotten him wrong. He wasn't a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he'd seen us all a good deal clearer than we'd ever seen him. ~ Richard Peck

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart. ~ Richard Peck

Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats. ~ Richard Peck

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, Hey, don't quit. ~ Richard Peck

When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a view north through a large sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader. ~ Jennifer M. Brown

Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'? ~ Richard Peck

Once a wish comes true, it disappears for good."
"That's what you wished for?" I asked, incredulous. "A peck on the cheek?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"This," said Amar, gesturing to the space between us, "the chance to be this close to you."
We looked at one another in silence. There was something new between us. Fragile and thrumming. I didn't know what to do. Nothing I had learned in Bharata's sanctum had taught me this. Nothing I had seen in the harem came close to what I felt. There was an undercurrent of depth, of something hard-won and dangerous. I couldn't treat it with lightness…and I didn't want to. ~ Roshani Chokshi

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore. ~ Richard P. Feynman

I had seen movies before that that had made me laugh, but I had never seen anything even remotely close to as funny as Richard Pryor was, just standing there talking. ~ Joe Rogan

If it ain't tubes, we don't do it. ~ Richard Smalley

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'. ~ Richard Dawkins

To be effective, demonstrators must pick the right square and make it the center of their activities. ~ Richard Engel

Basically, I have one feeling ... the desire to get out of here. And any other feelings I have come from trying to analyze, you know, why I want to go away ... See, I always feel uncomfortable and I just want to ... walk out of the room. It's not going to any other place or any other sensation, or anything like that, it's just to get out of 'here'. ~ Richard Hell

The very nature of the objective universe turns any spiritual faith and ideals into courageous acts of subjectivity, constantly vulnerable to intellectual negation. ~ Richard Tarnas

Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don't get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised. ~ Richard Branson

Fearing death - neurotically manifested as a fear of "failure" or being needy in American culture - we slavishly pursue "success" as it is defined by the surrounding culture. Even more troubling, we become hostile toward out-group members who call our hero system into question.

The great problem in all this - a problem we need to face before concluding - is how God and religion undergird and support the cultural hero system. Cultural hero systems and religion are deeply interconnected - in fact, they are generally synonymous - with our "God" or "gods" providing the warrant for our way of life. Recall that in order for hero systems to confer immunity in the face of death, they must be experienced as immortal and eternal. And there is no better way to create that sense of immortality than to baptize and sacralize the hero system, to fuse our way of life with the way of God.

What this means is that "God" and religious institutions can become as enslaved to the fear of death as everything else in the culture. The church can become as much a principality and power as any other cultural institution. And if this is so, service to "God" and "the church" can produce satanic outcomes as much as, if not more so, any other form of service to the power of death in our world.

In biblical terms, this is idolatry - when "God" and religion become another form of our slavery to the fear of death, another fallen principality and power demanding slavish service a ~ Richard Beck

Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for communication and a medium for introspective reflection. ~ Richard Leakey

I had great difficulties learning to play initially because I could not think rhythmically properly, although it's an even-paced rhythm, I was not phrasing properly, I was too Western. It took me a while to learn to think in needed form, and the only way I could learn was just by ear. ~ Richard Meale

During our visits, he consumed an embarrassingly varied assortment of cheap beer and wine, vacillating between fury and melancholy as one might imagine Richard Nixon to be doing not far away. Sometimes he choked on his emotions so badly I feared I would have to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

I've never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they'd just give me a bunch of words, I'd make up a song! The rhythm and everything. 'Good Golly Miss Molly'! And I didn't get a dime for it. ~ Little Richard

William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place. ~ Jennifer Haigh

We'd love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting. ~ Richard Branson

So there you have it: two things & I can't bring them together & they are wrenching me apart. These two feelings, this knowledge of a world so awful, this sense of a life so extraordinary - how am I to resolve them? ~ Richard Flanagan

When they got there, the first thing they saw was the man himself, with a white stick burning away in his mouth, cutting row after row of frosted cabbages. Rowsby Woof was with him, wagging his tail and jumping about in a ridiculous manner. After ~ Richard Adams

To get the respect of people, I think you've got to roll up your sleeves and lead with your people. The absolute key is treating your people well. Looking for the best in your people. Lots and lots of praise, no criticism. ~ Richard Branson

Elvis was God-given, there's no other explanation. A Messiah comes around
every few thousand years, and Elvis was it this time. ~ Little Richard

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers. ~ Richard Hooker

I'm leaving town cause my children are acting too much like me. ~ Richard Kind

Escape.. escape.. escape by God. Never mind hunger pains, discomfort, or any other agony. Let escape become your passion, your one and only obsession until you finally reach home. ~ Richard Pape

One of the saddest lines in the world is, 'Oh come now - be realistic.' The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride. ~ Richard Nelson Bolles

Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.
The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.
The Men of the Valley were marching again.
My Fathers were singing up there.
Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen. ~ Richard Llewellyn

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ~ Richard Rosen

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past. ~ Richard Chenevix Trench

Richard Grunberger points out in The Twelve-Year Reich, the Jew served a necessary psychological function. "Just as primitive man's concept of God supposed the existence of the Devil, so the German's progressive self-deification during the Third Reich depended upon the demonization of the Jew. ~ Leonard Gross

At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction. ~ Richard Paul Evans

Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory. ~ Richard P. Feynman

We've seen a lot of average college players turn into great NFL players. We've seen great college players turn into great NFL players. We've seen great college players turn into terrible NFL players. ~ Richard Sherman

For if there was one human condition that Madame Mallory understood, it was jealousy, the intense pain of realising there are those in the world who simply are greater than we are, surpassing us, in some profound way, in all our accomplishments. ~ Richard C. Morais

[They] had geared themselves for wealth, excitement, and violent combat, so they fought and played feverishly in the enervating heat, exploited the labor of white servants and black slaves, risked sudden death from mysterious diseases or the annihilation of their profits in smashing storms and buccaneering raids. The expectations the English brought with them and the physical conditions they encountered in the islands produced a hectic mode of life that had no counterpart at home or elsewhere in English experience. This is what it meant to live beyond the line. ~ Richard Dunn

That which is good for the society is not necessarily good for the individual. That which is good for the individual is good for the society. ~ Richard Diaz