Quotes from Paul Fleischman

Warming is incontrovertible, so in general, you're going to have more droughts, more fires. So I think events like that are the best thing that could happen for righting our ship and getting us on a safer course.

What could be more exciting when the writing is going well and things are falling into place? It's just like riding a fabulous wave for a surfer. There's no better place to be.

Science explains what nature is doing; money often explains what we're doing.

Parents should keep 'Eyes Wide Open' next to the 'Kinsey Report' on their shelves.

Mindfulness, as defined by the Buddha, means awareness of incessant change, of arising and vanishing, inside of your own body, which is the ultimate reality of your own life.

I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.

The few words of a title are the hardest words for any author to come up with.

I'm a very careful, slow writer, and I think a lot of that comes from the care required to be a hand-printer, where if something isn't spaced out enough, you take little slivers of brass or copper and put them between each letter.

People don't like to be nagged. When people nag us, we instantly resist, but when the facts force us in that same direction, we instantly adapt.

A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone's voice.

Television, I'm afraid, has isolated us more than race, class, or ethnicity.

When we have no families, we must find support elsewhere. Sometimes in strangers. We're all alone on this earth. We must take any hand that's offered us. I offer you mine...I'll be your friend, if you wish. The faithful kind. —Elva

The word paradise came out of my mouth, without thinking.

There's plenty about my life I can't change. Can't bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can't make the world loving and kind. Can't change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot -- I can change that. Can change it big. Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day.

the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.

You can't see Canada across Lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. Snow in April always breaks your heart.

It was a girl playing a harp, like in an orchestra. It was in this tree at our campsite. And since it was breezy weather that weekend, the girl's arms were almost always turning.

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band.

The whirligig featured a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, and a man with a trombone. It was a leap beyond the spouting whale, with more figures, a six-bladed propeller, and a much more complex system of rods and pivots that made the instruments dip and rise as if the musicians were marching.

The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm.

But determination can make the miraculous possible.

Isn't that the essence of literature?...Our ability to identify with characters, no matter that they're separated from us by thousands of miles and hundreds of lifetimes. We may have no Mount Vesuvius looming over us. It may not be lava and ashes we fear. But we look at these forms, and we know what they felt.

Community gardens] were oases in the urban landscape of fear, places where people could safely offer trust, helpfulness, charity, without need of an earthquake or hurricane...Community gardens are places where people rediscover not only generosity, but the pleasure of coming together. I salute all those who give their time and talents to rebuilding that sense of belonging.

He desired to become the man he was impersonating.