Quotes from Bruce Coville

But, really, why does anyone create? You feel a...restlessness inside, a need to make something new, something no one has ever seen before. You want to add to the beauty and the richness of the world with a gift, an offering that is uniquely yours. It's an act of selfishness and generosity, all rolled into one.

L)ittle is debated with greater ferocity than the question of what the creator owes the creation. Some feel you must hover over it, guarding it every moment. Others believe the highest, hardest, and most important task is to let go. They say that just as the parent must at some point release the child to the world, the creator must release the creation. Otherwise you stop it in its tracks, strangle its growth. Then you become not only its creator, but its executioner.

I stopped talking and stared into the distance. Hold on, I whispered. I think I'm about to be brilliant. -Nina Tanleven, The Ghost Wore Gray

As it turned out, he was wrong about that. The last guest didn't show up until we were eating our dessert. That was when the ghost sat down in the empty chair-directly across from me.

My father told me that when he was a kid, it was the best place in Syracuse to go to the movies. I told him I didn't think movies had been invented when he was a kid. He said he loved me, but if I didn't shut up and fill out my audition form, he'd probably kill me. I told him if he really felt that way he should give me a pen.

We were having so much fun gossiping about the show that it was nearly half an hour before we got back to the subject of the microfilm. Actually, I was the one who got us on track again when I suddenly shouted, July, 1935! in a voice far too loud for the library. Sam looked at me strangely. That's the date of the play, I said, blushing. I just remembered it.

Then you're saying this theater isn't haunted? I'm saying so what if it is? said Edgar. People have been saying the place is haunted for nearly fifty years now, and in all that time the ghost hasn't done one bit of harm. Why should she start now? Maybe she doesn't like the script, Ken Abbott said. Thanks a lot, Ken, said Alan Bland.

What terrifies us is what might happen if you learn to use your full intelligence before you become truly civilized. Stars above! If you people find your way into space before you fix whatever's wrong with your spirits, the damage you'd wreak could make what you've done to your own planet look like a forest rangers' picnic.

They packed him away for a few months last year, you know. Nutty as a fruitcake, though you wouldn't know it to look at him now. Not that he's normal, or anything. But he doesn't give you the idea that there are little bats flying around in his head anymore, if you know what I mean.

I knew Pop would get me out of the coffin. But I had feeling when he did I might wish I was back inside it again.

What we do not wish to remember we sometimes hide. That which we hide long enough is sometimes forgotten altogether, even if it never forgets itself.

There would not be much left if every useful thing that could be turned to bad ends were destroyed.

T)he downfall of the wise and the mighty comes not from being strong or wise, but from thinking you are stronger and wiser than you truly are, than any being can truly be.

Each of us is a miracle. Alas, it is a fact we too often forget.

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.

I am ignoring you. In fact, I think you are a figment of my imagination.

There's lots of kinds of chains...You can't see most of them, the ones that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak...That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all.

Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can't hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they've touched you, if they're inside you, then they're still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.

Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV?

Family isn't blood," she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you.

All these guys picking on smart kids and calling them geeks and dweebs are going to grow up and want to know why they don't do something about the terrible state the world is in. I can tell you why. By the time they grow up, most of the kids who realy could have changed things are wrecked.

Gadfangled girl things, always robbed me of my common sense.

Luster, bring me home.