Quotes from Blue Balliett

my grandpa and grandma aren't like me. They're more like sheets drying outside on a breezy day--they change directions without any fuss. But me, if I was a sheet and the wind blew me, I'd never stop flapping.

What was a little dark, anyway? Just no sun, [Petra] reminded herself as her sneakers pounded toward the opening. Just dark, all three fine, she whispered to herself again and again, spinning the words outward into a mobile in her mind. They floated into dark-three, all-just-fine and then into all-fine, dark-just-three.

you can pick what you want from the definition, like picking flowers from a garden

Crash, from the Russian krashenina Noun: a rough fabric sometimes used to strengthen the spine of a book

Be a squeaky wheel but talk nice

People get distracted by worries and sadness, and have to struggle to see anything else. They have to work hard to hold on to beauty, to hold fast to dreams and words

I love the way a list makes a big hodgepodge of things simmer down and behave.