Quotes from Natalie Babbitt

That doesn't sound like civil war to me, said Gaylen, turning back to his book with a smile. It only sounds silly. Of course it's silly, said the Prime Minister impatiently. But a lot of serious things start silly.

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.

For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

Readers are lucky -– they will never be bored or lonely.

Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short

I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread.

They've really begun the war, he said to himself. And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies!

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful—most of the time—of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't—not a bit of it—be true. And yet:

And Winnie, laughing at him, lost the last of her alarm. They were friends, her friends. She was running away after all, but she was not alone. Closing

I'm not exactly sure what I'd do, you know but something interesting - something that's all mine something that would make some kind of difference in the world.

You can't have living without dying.

You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.

When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore.

Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside.

She's gone," he answered.

I can't help what I dream.

She was able to believe in this because she needed to; and, believing, was her own true, promising friend once more.

And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We're plain as salt, us Tucks. We don't deserve no blessings—if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don't see how we deserve to be cursed, if it's a curse. Still—there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.

He looked solid, like an oar, whereas Jesse—well, she decided, Jesse was like water: thin, and quick.

He knows you?" said Mae, her frown deepening. "But you didn't call out to him, child. Why not?" "I was too scared to do anything ," said Winnie honestly. Tuck shook his head. "I never thought we'd come to the place where we'd be scaring children," he said.

You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time.

Nothing ever seems interesting when it belongs to you—only when it doesn't.