Quotes from Beverly Cleary

Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.

Words were so puzzling. Present should mean a present just as attack should mean to stick tacks in people.

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.

Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt...The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.

The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.

All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.

I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents' Night.

Love isn't like a cup of sugar that gets used up