Quotes from Rodman Philbrick

As a kid, books were my great escape and my salvation.

I have vivid memories of junior high school. I didn't quite know how to deal with kids and make friends and all of that. If you talked to people who knew me at the time, they'd think I was a popular kid in school. But boy, I didn't feel that.

You can't mess around with young readers - you have to cut straight to the heart of the story. The character can be complex, the plot can have some surprises, but the emotions have to be clear.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Remembering is a great invention of the mind.

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I wanted to make the world of 'The Last Book in the Universe' as real as possible, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I decided the world would be a very different place, but people would be pretty much the same.

Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain.

I know who the real hero is, and it isn't me or brave Lanaya. It's an old man with a white beard and a walking stick and a heart so big it won't let him stop thinking he can change the world by writing down things in a book no one will ever read.

I think in some way it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows.

For the last week or so it's like getting jabbed with a little needle every time I hear that word. Gram is trying to pretend how excited she is I'm finally in the eighth grade, like this is a really big deal. Which is a joke, because the only reason I got passed from seventh grade is because they figured this way the big butthead can be — quote — someone else's problem, thank God, we've had quite enough of Maxwell Kane — unquote.

Shut up! I say, holding my hands to my ears. Shut up! But the stupid gummy won't shut up; he's trying to tell me something important even though I'm covering my ears and I don't want to hear it and I don't want to think about who I am or what's wrong with me or why I'm out here at the edge of the Urb, at the edge of the known world, listening to some old mope who's so crazy, he think about the future when everyone knows that the future doesn't exist.

I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for awhile, and that's the truth, the whole truth. The unvanquished truth, is how Freak would say it, and for a long time it was him who did the talking.

He's a feral child. No mother, no father, no one to care for him or raise him or teach him how to be human. So he's existed much like an animal, without language. He thinks in images, not word. How strange, Lanaya, sounding amazed. Ryter shakes his head sadly. Not strange, I'm afaraid. His condition is all too common in the latches. And becoming more common every day.

freak the mighty is the best book I ever read so I recommend it to anyone who likes good books that have different feellings and emotions

Dead man has nothin' to lose, nothin' to be feared of. Now I'm back among the living and scared to death about what happens next. —Samuel Reed

when the dope fiend who lived there finally got busted. At first I'm thinking the dope fiend is back

That does it. It can't be true love. Mr. Willow has eyes like a sick kitten. You might love a sick kitten but you don't marry it, you keep it as a pet.

It's fun to be amazing, to be the star of the show, to have everyone watching you—even if you have to act like a pig.

In his opinion, humans were best when miserable, and so he had worked at being miserable his whole life, and in his generous way tried to make as many people miserable as possible.

Keep marching boys and girls. Keep marching

Will it hurt? I ask. Getting your parts replaced? Freak doesn't answer for a while and then he says in his stern, smart voice, Sure it will hurt. But so what? Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain. I'm pretty worried about the whole deal, and I go, But why do you want to be the first? Can't someone else be first? Isn't it dangerous? Life is dangerous, Freak says.