Quotes from Nancy Willard

I haven't a clue how my story will end, but that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that's when you discover the stars.

In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her.

If prayers worked, Hitler would have been stopped at the border of Poland by angels with swords of fire.

When I was growing up, I loved stories in which a girl sets out on a quest to rescue the prince instead of the other way around.

Jean Piaget observed that scarcely any question seems absurd to a child, but he was silent on the question of absurd answers from adults.

Armenian folklore has it that three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart.' What a pity Heaven awarded no apple to the one who wrote the story down.

the skin of moss / holds the footprints of / star-footed birds.

Faith takes root in the insignificant.

Sometimes questions are more important than answers.

Answers are closed rooms; and questions are open doors that invite us in.

It is time to turn on the moon. It is time to live by a different light.

Our house is quiet, small and plain, and yet its rooms run far and wide. A hundred pencils, swift as rain, writing on sheets of beaten gold would not be quick enough to hold the strange adventures shadows hide...

In this vale of tears we must take what we're sent, feathery, leathery, lovely or bent.