Quotes from Richard Peck

T]he name that matters is the name you make for yourself in a life of struggle and success!

I was getting long in the leg but still short on experience.

Mother told her she looked just like the duchess of York, but younger. Lucille returned the compliment by remarking that Mother looked just like Queen Alexandra, but younger. And Dad wondered aloud what was wrong with good American people: "You look right miserable, Dad," I told him. "So do you, Alexander, but younger," he replied.

Gladys took a supper tray upstairs to Mother, who said she could not face anybody anymore that night or maybe ever. Lucille was a worse case. She stalked through all the rooms staring up at the ceilings like she was planning to take her cue from Captain Campbell and hang herself from a light fixture.

But witnesses will say a good deal to make a long story out of a short happening.

The Shambaughs came, bringing Letty. She simpered up to me. Her eyes summed up the lace tippets on my Princess dress and the wide taffeta sash that was cutting me in half. Well, Blossom, just look at you! she said in her mother's own grown-up voice. I have always said a good dress will cover up any flaw. Then you had better get one like it, I replied.

That's the way people is who ain't goin' anyplace in life theirselves. They don't want you goin' anyplace either.

Only the nonreader fears books.

I read.. because one life is not enough

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.

If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one.

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.