Quotes from Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

It had been awful, but I hadn't quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.

I wanted to say a lot of things, but, as usual, I didn't have the words for the thoughts inside my head.

You can know things all you like, and someday you might believe them.

Love isn't as rare as you think it is...You can love all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. Nor is love in any way dangerous.

What you know in your head and what you say out loud are not always the same.

If I started letting myself feel afraid I would never be able to stop.

What's right and what's permitted are sometimes different things.

Sometimes you've got a story you need to find the courage to tell.

You're perfectly capable of learning. You mustn't listen to people who don't know you. Listen to what you know, yourself.

Then I did what I should have done to start with. I taught myself to walk.

It was horrible how the hardest things could be the truth.

After that it was easy. It was the most impossible thing I'd ever done, but it was also easy. I held on to Jamie, and I kept moving forward.

I don't want to just survive

It was us, I thought. Jamie and me. We had fallen down a rabbit hole, fallen into Susan's house, and nothing made sense, not at all, not anymore.

Sourpuss," she said, laughing. "Would it kill you to be grateful?" Maybe. Who knew?

People used to draw dragons on the edges of old maps. When the world hadn't been fully explored, mapmakers imagined dragons living at the far ends.

But what do I do with them?" Miss Smith said "I've never been around children." "Feed them, bathe them, make sure they get plenty of sleep," the doctor said. "They're no more diffi cult than puppies, really." He grinned

And even if it felt like Mam hated me, she had to love me, didn't she? She had to love me, because she was my mam, and Susan was just somebody who got stuck taking care of Jamie and me because of the war.

Keep going," Susan said. "The only way out of this is straight through.

Victory,' she said, 'means peace.

This is to remind me of the best day of my life." She looks down at me. For a wonder, she smiles back. "When was that?" she asks. "Tomorrow," I say.

I shrugged. "There's a war on." "Yes," she said, "and you're winning it.

I kept traveling down the road. And everywhere it was the same. What was my name, who were my people? What was I supposed to say? That my father is the president, and my mother is his slave?

Jamie sings like a squirrel.