Quotes from Pat Murphy

If you can't change the world with chocolate chip cookies, how can you change the world?

If you can't change the world with chocolate chip cookies, how can you change the world?

I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized I couldn't find books that took me to all the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.

I've learned to write the truth. But to do that, I had to figure out what the truth was-and I had to realize that the truth isn't always the same for everyone. I had to realize that my truth may not be the same as your truth.

Sometimes, you gotta believe something crazy. Because all the other things you could believe hurt too much.

The men in the nearby village fear us, thinking we are witches. Women who live without men—especially old women who grow herbs, heal the sick, and befriend wild animals—are always suspect.

You do it for yourself, not for anyone else. When you make something beautiful, you change. You put something of yourself into the thing you make. You're a different person when you're done.

Each culture defines its own idiosyncracies and then forgets that it has done so.

You are afraid of us. You are afraid because you don't know what we might do.

Verla says that nobody thinks of himself as a villain. Even the nastiest person thinks that he is in the right.

I thought it was a really good story,' Cindy said. She was trying to make me feel better, I think. 'I liked the way it ended. When I was halfway through, I was thinking that maybe some handsome prince was going to show up and save the princess.' 'She didn't need a handsome prince,' I said. 'Those wild girls did just fine on their own.

What do you do when you are falling? Do you reach out and try to grab for support? If you aren't careful, you will pull others down with you. Unless you are very careful.

Do you know how to tell if a work is art?" he asked her calmly. "True art changes the artist. The artist puts something into the work and he changes. That's how you tell.

But when you write something down, you have to think it all the way through. Sometimes, I'm not even sure how I feel about something until I write a story about it. I figure it out while I'm writing the story.

We find the Mayan pantheon peculiar. By our standards, suicide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. We tend not to notice the peculiarities of our own culture. We accept the thousands of children who wear braces to correct their teeth, yet we consider the Maya odd for filing teeth to beautify them. Each culture defines its own idiosyncracies and then forgets that it has done so.

I wasn't wearing war paint. But that didn't matter. I didn't need war paint. I was a different person than I had been, back then.

Somewhere at my center, with the madness I had locked away, I had sealed off the part of me that knew how to love. It was too close to the part of me that knew how to hate, and that was at the center of the madness. I had sealed them all away, leaving a dead place...

In the United States, people interpret these things as eccentricity or – if taken to an extreme – madness,' my mother said mildly. 'Here, they are the mark of a witch. Of the two interpretations, I have to admit I prefer the second. A witch has some power. A madwoman is just a nut.

All those square-jawed heroes of the old science fiction stories had it wrong. You can't save the world as we know it. I did what I could, and I did some good in the world. But you can't save the world without changing it.

He was a strange lad—with a peculiar, dreamy air about him that made some think he was dim-witted. But he wasn't stupid—he just paid attention to other lessons. Bones

If you don't believe in ghosts, then I dare you to run around the old man's grave. Three times. Counterclockwise." John thought about it. "If I run round it counterclockwise, that'll bring bad luck," he said. "I believe in bad luck." " Bones

Someone once told me that archaeologists are anthropologists who don't like live people. They dig up dead ones because dead ones can't talk back. That's not quite true. But I think live people are too fast for most archaeologists. We're a slow-moving lot.

He arranged three hundred pairs of women's shoes on the stairway that climbed from Taylor Street to Broadway. High heels and flats, running shoes and loafers, all of them heading uphill, as if an army of invisible women had paused to rest while climbing. Danny-boy

I must waken these somnolent beasts and teach them something, make them blink, shake their heavy heads, and grope for answers in their sluggish brains. I must breathe life into the dusty air.