Quotes from Kathi Appelt

I had tried writing novels for many years, and they always escaped me. For a long time, I thought, 'It's just not in me to write a novel. It's not something I'm able to do.' It seemed like everything I wrote naturally ended at the bottom of page three. A picture book, three pages; an essay, three pages.

My favorite was the one about 'Snow White'. Those funky little guys with the beards. The poisonous apple. And that cool mirror the evil stepmother used to talk to. You know, she'd ask it all these questions: Who's the nicest? Who's the sweetest... Who's the fairest of them all? And for a while, everything was hunky-dory.

I always wanted to write a raccoon story. I don't know why. It's not like I want to own a raccoon or anything like that. I'm just fascinated by them.

I have always been interested in abandoned cars. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a car, driving, and there's a car sitting in a pasture, totally abandoned. Or on the edge of a creek or something. I always wonder: why did somebody park it in the pasture and leave?

They were the darkest of times, the years following the crash of the stock market in 1929. Thousands of people across the United States were cast out of their Jobs, off their farms, out of their homes and apartments, and into the crushing depths of poverty.

Many of the original New Deal programs required heavy manual labor. WPA workers built hundreds of schools, health clinics, roads, park facilities, and community centers. Much of what we now call our 'infrastructure' - highways, buildings, power plants, etc. - is here thanks to thousands of WPA workers.

For cats, a hound is a natural enemy. This is the order of things.

On the craft level, writing for children is not so different from writing for adults. You still have to have a story that moves forward. You still have to have the tools of the trade down. The difference arises in the knowledge of who you're writing for. This isn't necessary true of writing for adults.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to find a way to help the American people. In 1933, he created a relief program known as the New Deal. Two years later, he expanded the New Deal by adding the Works Progress Administration, which was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.

Purring is not so different from praying. To a tree, a cat's purr is one of the purest of all prayers, for in it lies a whole mixture of gratitude and longing, the twin ingredients of every prayer.

Memory is a slippery thing. When something terrible happens to you, like the loss of someone you love...memory can turn into a soft blanket that hides you from the loss.

Purring is not so different from praying. To a tree, a cat's purr is one of the purest of all prayers, for in it lies a whole mixture of gratitude and longing, the twin ingredients of every prayer.

Humans are designed to be with other humans, even those with mixed blood. They need each other's laughter. They require each other's sorrows.

He) had not realized how much he needed this sweet, friendly sound. How much he needed someone to settle in next to him. He didn't know that he needed to not be so solitary until at last he wasn't. So many needs in one old dog.

It's a soft-sounding word, 'never,' but its velvety timbre can't hide its sharp edges...Never pressed down on him. It grabbed him by the neck and shook him. He sucked in a deep breath, sucked in all that never and started to sneeze. Never filled his nose, his eyes, his soaking fur.

Memory is a slippery thing. When something terrible happens to you, like the loss of someone you love...memory can turn into a soft blanket that hides you from the loss.

They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but the same is not true for courage. As it turns out, when courage strikes, it almost always begets more courage.

Nosotros somos paisanos. We are fellow countrymen. We come from the same soil.

He put his hand in his pocket and found the porte-bonheur, still warm. He looked back at the pier. The one-eyed cat waited. All at once, Henri Beauchamp spun on his heels and stretched his arms wide to the morning sky. It didn't matter, did it, what Jack was? It only mattered that he loved him.

There's something to be said for visibility, something about being easier to love.

Whenever there is a breeze in the old forest, you might, for a moment, realize that the trees are singing. There, on the wind, are the voices of sugarberry and juniper and maple...

THERE IS NOTHING lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.

For trees, who see so much sorrow, so much anger, so much desperation, know love for the rare wonder of it, so they are champions of it and will do whatever they can to help it along its way.

Tennessee. Now there's a name for you. His mama named him that on account of their last name being so regular. 'With a plain vanilla name like Jones, you gotta have a first name that's special,' she'd said.