Quotes from Karen Hesse

Ma had been a tumbleweed too, holding on for as long as she could, then blowing away on the wind. My father was more like the sod. Steady, silent, and deep. Holding on to life, with reserves underneath to sustain him, and me, And anyone else who came near. My father stayed rooted, even with my tests and my temper, even with the double sorrow of his grief and my own, he had kept a home until I broke it.

the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.

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. And what I am is good enough. Even for me.

As long as you live, it is never too late to make amends. Take my advice, child. Don't waste your precious life with regrets and sorrow. Find a way to make right what was wrong, and then move on.

From the time I was ten, I thought of myself as 'good with words,' thanks to a perceptive and supportive fifth grade teacher.

Young readers are the most challenging, demanding, and rewarding of audiences. Adults often ask why I write for the younger set. My reply: 'I can't think of anyone I'd rather write for.'

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.

the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.

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. And what I am is good enough. Even for me.

I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.

I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.

Sometimes, a flame can be utterly extinguished. Sometimes, a flame can shrink and waver, but sometimes a flame refuses to go out. It flares up from the faintest ember to illuminate the darkness, to burn in spite of overwhelming odds.

As long as you live, it is never too late to make amends. Take my advice, child. Don't waste your precious life with regrets and sorrow. Find a way to make right what was wrong, and then move on.

to those who swear our young are on the road to perdition take comfort in this- every generation has felt somewhat the same for two or three thousand years and the still the world goes on.

each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb.

I have a hunger, for more than food. I have a hunger bigger than Joyce City. I want tongues to tie, and eyes to shine at me like they do at Mad Dog Craddock. Course they never will, not with my hands all scarred up, looking like the earth itself, all parched and rough and cracking, but if I played right enough, maybe they would see past my hands. Maybe they could feel at ease with me again, and maybe then, I could feel at east with myself.

When I rode the train west, I went looking for something, but I didn't see anything wonderful. I didn't see anything better than what I already had. Home.

the morning with the whole day waiting, full of promise, the night of quiet, of no expectations, of rest. And the certainty of home, the one I live in, and the one that lives in me.

His mother is wishing her boy would come home." Lots of mothers wishing that these days, while their sons walk to California, where rain comes, and the color green doesn't seem like such a miracle, and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.

I play songs that have only the pattern of my self in them and you hum along suporting me. You are the companion to myself. The mirror with my mother'e eyes.

The schoolhouse, on this sunlit morning, has begun to take on the scent of girls with wind-blown hair, with seeds in their pockets, with road-hardened feet.

And she knows how to come into a home and not step on the toes of a ghost.

We might not belong to anyone else in this whole world. But us Faulstiches,we belong to each other.

I don't want to die, I just want to go, away, out of the dust.