Quotes from Kate DiCamillo

I love your round head, the brilliant green, the watching blue, these letters, this world, you. I am very, very hungry.

Normally, Edward would have found intrusive, clingy behavior of this sort very annoying, but there was something about Sarah Ruth. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do more for her. (page 135)

Love!' said the princess. She stamped her foot. 'Why must everyone always speak of love?

Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still.

Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light. And because Despereaux wanted very much to live, he said, Once upon a time...

But she couldn't help it. She did hope. She was hoping. She had been hoping all along.

I have already been loved," said Edward. "I have been loved by a girl named Abilene. I have been loved by a fisherman and his wife and a hobo and his dog. I have been loved by a boy who played the harmonica and by a girl who died. Don't talk to me about love," he said. "I have known love.

I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.

Things are not at all what they seem to be: oh no, not at all.

There is no right or wrong way to tell a story. You have to find your own way. You can get your idea from listening, looking, or imagining. Stories are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention.

You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.

He was weeping. Although 'weeping' really is to small a word for the activity the kind had undertaken. Tears were cascading from his eyes. A small puddle had formed at his feet. I am not exaggerating. The king, it seemed, was intent on crying himself a river.

It was the strangest things, how happiness came out of nowhere and inflated your soul.

The world went on. People left and people died and people went to memorial services and put orange blocks of cheese into their purses. People confessed to you that they were hungry all the time. And then you got up in the morning and pretended that none of it had happened.

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light.

That squid is a villain, said Flora out loud. He needs to be vanquished. He's eating a boat. And he's going to eat all of the people on the boat. Yes, well, loneliness makes us do terrible things, said Dr. Meescham. And that is why the picture is there, to remind me of this. Also, because the other Dr. Meescham painted it when he was young and joyful. Good grief, thought Flora. What did he paint when he was old and depressed?

All of God's creatures have names, every last one of them. Of that I am sure: of that I have no doubt at all.

What matters when all is said and done is not who puts us down, but who picks us up.

When I was a girl in Blundermeecen we wondered always if we would see each other again. Each day was uncertain. So, to say good-bye to someone was uncertain, too. Would you see them again? Who could say? Blundermeecen was a place of dark secrets, unmarked graves, terrible curses. Trolls were everywhere! So we said good-bye to each other the best way we could. We said: I promise to always turn back toward you.

Her words sounded the way all those things made him feel, as if the world, the real world, had been punched through, so that he could see something wonderful and dazzling on the other side of it.

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.

There is somebody who loves me, said Despereaux. And I love her and that is the only thing that matters to me.

It seems to be that way with most things. No one to do the really disagreeable jobs except oneself.