Quotes from Virginia Euwer Wolff

If you want something to grow and be so beautiful you could have a nice day just from looking at it, you have to wait. Meanwhile you keep watering it and it has to have sunshine and also you talk to it.

Why didn't you tell us the first day?" And Jolly goes, "Well, nobody told me—I didn't know—" She goes, "Nobody told me. You know?" And when she says this it's like a flat tire got fixed in my head and I suddenly see the sign of her life: "Nobody told me." I look in my brain and I make a brief list of who's sposed to tell you things. It's your folks and your teachers and your girlfriends and your coach if you have a sport.

I want to be the one to say: "This is what I'll do, this is how I'll do it, and now see? I've done it.

She isn't easy to have for a mom, she has too many opinions for one family, she can make me want to slam doors and stick out my tongue but I don't do it because of the long run.

Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience.

One of the people on my Mom's Council, he used to be a boxer. My Mom always says he always says Get up on the 1. You don't want them to count to 2 'cause then it's easy to count 3 while you go on being down. Always Get up on the 1.

Car horns honk way down on the street. Human life: honking, honking wanting everything to go our way.

You want my honest opinion?" she says. I've already heard too many, but she goes ahead: "LaVaughn, I like you for being uppity. That's partly why we're here. Right?" "Huh?" I ask her. "Here in this room we're obligated to be uppity. That's our purpose here. We're supposed to change. Those friends of yours can't appreciate you. They don't know how.

In Biology Patrick and I were like two pencils in a box, parallel but not alive to each other, my guilty feelings stifling my common sense.

ambivalent. To feel two ways about the same thing, 'Ambi-' from the Greek, meaning 'both.' 'valent,' from the Latin, meaning 'going.' Remember: Feeling ambivalent is a crucial step in the process of living thoughtfully. When we notice our ambivalence and examine it, then our minds can thrive.

You know how you want something so much and you're afraid of it too?

He could add something to the list of things you weren't supposed to do. Don't get hurt, don't get dirty, don't get drunk, don't get scared, don't count on it. You ended up doing all of them.

We weren't put on Earth to exclude each other.

And so I came on the discovery with no warning. Religion must be for trusting. And trusting, what is that for? I figured it out: It helps you go on when you can't go on.

I tell him he's a good boy. He says he knows it. "Good boy sure," he says. I want to dig down way far into his brain and find out some of his details. How does he know? What makes him so convinced?