Quotes from Karen Hesse

While growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I dreamed of becoming many things: an archaeologist, an ambassador, an actor, an author.

In the dolphin family, if one is lost, all are lost.

Don't go to Joyce City, Billie, she said. You can get what we need down Hardly's store.

The potatoes are peppered plenty tonight, Polly, and Chocolate milk for dinner, aren't we in clover!

I can turn the fields over, start again. It's sure to rain soon. Wheat's sure to grow.

now and again, to keep a person hoping. But even if it didn't your daddy would have to believe. It's coming on spring and he's a farmer.

His mother is worrying about him, Ma said. His mother is wishing her boy would come home.

Hansel and Gretel

Billie Jo threw the pail, they said. An accident, they said.

The blossom opened at midnight, big as a dinner plate. It took only moments to unfold.

I'm good at digging

Billie Jo's father brought in a pail of kerosene put it next to the stove, Billie Jo's ma thought it was water so she used it and ending up catching the pail on fire ma went to get pa and Billie Jo thought she was doing a good thing by getting rid of the pail that was on fire not knowing her mom was coming back into the house and caught her mom on fire and Billie Jo put out the flames on her mom with her hands.

You'd leave the farm? I asked. He nodded. You'd leave school?

You've got what it takes, Billie Jo. Look at the size of those hands, he'd say. Look at how tall.

It's best to let the dead rest

Just because I'm tall doesn't mean I can play basketball, or even that I want to.

Taken food from a child.

Where you fro, miss?

I can't be my own mother

Why'd you wait so long to show someone those spots, Bayard?

What, I say, can I do with them?

And I know now that all the time I was trying to get out of the dust, the fact is, what I am, I am because of the dust.

The dolphin, they live for today. But I am human. To be human is to live for tomorrow. Why does tomorrow matter? What is important is now.

Getting away, it wasn't any better. Just different. And lonely. Lonelier than the wind. Emptier than the sky. More silent than the dust, piled in drifts between me and my father.