Quotes from Margaret Peterson Haddix

even the most independent people sometimes needed help. And if I'd learned nothing else from my life thus far, it was that you don't always end up where you think you're going.

I am not just what I remember. I am also what I dream.

I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.

I want to Live! Not Die, Not Hide, LIVE!

Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.

I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.

The Government justifies keeping everyone else in poverty because people seem to work the hardest when they're right on the edge of survival.

Jen, we did it. Everyone's free now.

We'll have a 'rest of our lives' now

bitter is a bad way to live!

There's hope around the corner.

A thousand times today I've started to open my mouth, started to squeak out, "Can you tell me...? But then I'd look into the front seat, at my mother's silent shaking, my father's grim profile, the mournful bags under his eyes, and all the questions I might ask seemed abusive. Assault and battery, a question mark used like a club. My parents are old and fragile. I'd have to heartless to want to hurt them.

There is nothing more valuable than the printed word.

And yet, I felt a surge of exhilaration just thinking about that night. Not just because I'd met the prince and fallen in love and started on my course toward happiness ever after, but because I'd made something happen. I'd done something everybody had told me I couldn't. I'd changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything.

It's people like you who change history. People like me--we just let things happen to us.

That porch is a happy-looking place, and my father - burdened, stoop-shouldered, cadaverously thin - doesn't seem to belong on it.

A ssure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension.

The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, my mind a jumble. So much for breaking it off gently, I thought. The humor helped my mind clear, but I couldn't laugh. What would happen next?

He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes. "This is wrong", he thought, "Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.".... He breathed in the too-sweet smell of rotting food, "I can stop this evil.

I wish, peevishly, that he didn't know anything about how soldiers sleep, how they protect their fellow soldiers. It would be nicer if I could share the cloaks warmth with him, if we could lie with our faces together, whispering into the night.

I don't know what you two are up to," Hobart said. "But you be careful now, you hear? Don't do anything I wouldn't do." "Well now, that doesn't restrict us very much, does it?" Mark teased back.

it'd be like looking for a needle in a burning haystack.' 'Oh, I've done that,' Mark said airily. 'It's a game we used to play, after we got rid of all our livestock and didn't need our hay no more. You throw a match into the haystack, give the fire a three-second head start, and begin looking. You can find the needle every time if you work quick