Quotes from Kate DiCamillo

What world is this I now inhabit, and how shall I live in it?

I am done with being loved, Edward told her. I'm done with loving. It's too painful. Pish. said the old doll. Where is your courage? Somewhere else. I guess, said Edward. You disappoint me, she said. You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now.

you never know what's going to happen next. It keeps you on your toes. That's what Granny says. And it's important to be on your toes because you just never know what might happen next in this world.

A great reader makes a great writer

And now you have a small map of the princess's heart (hatred, sorrow, kindness, empathy), the heart that she carried down inside her as she went down the golden stairs and through the kitchen and, finally, just as the sky outside the castle began to lighten, down into the dark dungeon with the rat and the serving girl.

There is nothing worse than war in the summetime.

All things are possible. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every other day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I'm saying? Even when it didn't happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.

How many times, Edward wondered, would he have to leave without getting the chance to say goodbye?

Oh, my goodness," said Louisiana. "I'm just all filled up with feathers and regrets. And fears. I have a lot of fears.

He was the kind of person who, if you asked him for one of something, gave you two instead.

Once, oh marvelous once, there was a rabbit who found his way home.

Not much goes on in the mind of a squirrel. Huge portions of what is loosely termed the squirrel brain are given over to one thought: food. The average squirrel cogitation goes something like this: I wonder what there is to eat .

Desperaux, she said. He saw his name on her lips. I honor you, whispered Desperaux. I honor you.

It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.

Do not hope; instead, observe" were words that Flora, as a cynic, had found useful in the extreme. She repeated them to herself a lot.

What is it to know that people will come searching for you? Everything.

Never use anybody else's power, but always use yours.

The rabbit felt dizzy. He wondered for a minute, if his head had cracked open again, if he was dreaming. Look, Mama, said Maggie, look at him. I see him, said the woman. She dropped the umbrella. She put her hand on the locket that hung around her neck. And Edward saw then that it was not a locket at all. It was a watch. It was his watch. Edward? said Abilene. Yes, said Edward. Edward, she said again, certain this time. Yes, said Edward, yes, yes, yes. It's me.

I have a deep gratitude that Ida B exists.

Perhaps this is a dream, said Madam La Vaughn from her chair. Perhaps the whole thing has been nothing but a dream.

I don't know, Louisiana. I can't see into the future. I do think that, more often than not, love has a way of finding us.

What does it mean to be brave? This was a question Brother Edik asked himself as he walked through the dark woods with Jack Dory and Cannoc and Answelica. To be brave is to not turn away. To be brave is to go forward. To be brave is to love.

Because that is what it means to be alive, on this infinitesimally spinning planet. It means you have cares. Doesn't it?

What is?', he said. 'What if?' is a question that belongs to magic.