Quotes from Christopher Paul Curtis

In the right hands, words can move more bricks than the strongest team of mules.

Work at your craft, write daily, and follow your dreams because dreams do come true.

I'm the same age as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.

that was Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things to Have a Funner LIfe and Make a Better Liar Out of Yourself Number 83...If a Adult Tells You Not to Worry, and You Weren't Worried Before, You Better Hurry Up and Start 'Cause You're Already Running Late.

There comes a time when you're losing a fight that it just doesn't make sense to keep on fighting. It's not that you're being a quitter, it's just that you've got the sense to know when enough is enough.

Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.

A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It's a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that's you.

There's one good thing about getting in trouble: It seems like you do it in steps. It seems like you don't just end up in trouble but that you kind of ease yourself into it. It also seems like the worse the trouble is that you get into, the more steps it takes to get there. Sort of like you're getting a bunch of little warnings on the way; sort of like if you really wanted to you could turn around.

No sir, I don't know why, but my eyes don't cry no more.

Having a little pee in your pants had to be better than being dinner for some redneck.

Byron says he won't go there. He give Kenny and Joey a story about "Wool Pooh," the supposed evil twin of Winnie-the-Pooh. They believe him, but Kenny still wants to go.

Wow. Who would want a fish for a pet when they could have a turtle?!

There's a thin, blurry line between humor and tragedy.

Just like when there's a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there's a time when you know you've got to fight.

having someone who likes you so much that they think everything you say is the truth has got to be a liar's paradise

You can tell you're reading a really good book when you forget all about everything else and know you'll die if you get to at least the end of the chapter

Now, your mother and I made a deal when we first got married that if either one of us ever watched the 'wunnerful, wunnerful' Lawrence Welk Show or listened to country music the other one got to get a free divorce.

The big steel wheels creaked a couple times, then started moving.

Hoping is such hard work. It tires you out and you never seem to get any kind of reward. Hoping feels like you're a balloon that has a pinhole that slowly leaks air.

Things aren't ever what they seem to be when you first look at them. What's important is that you keep your mind wide open and try to understand what's going on from a lot of different angles.

inside or the outside. I touched paper. I spread

You know, there's something especially lonely about a gold medal hanging all by itself on a bedroom wall, something that says "fluke," or "beginner's luck," or "one in a million," but two gold medals, now that says something completely different. That says, "Oh, yeah, baby, this is the real deal!

But I was kind of surprised that God would send a saver to me in such raggedy clothes.

his sermons go on so long that some of the time you feel like begging, "Take me now, Jesus," 'bout halfway through 'em.