E. L. Konigsburg Quotes
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But happiness is not always loud and bright and crowded. Happiness ripens like a watermelon, sweet and rosy on the inside with only a thin top layer altogether free of small black pits. And, like a watermelon, the whole thing can be covered with a plain dark rind.
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Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides.
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Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of place and a feeling of self-consciousness - self-consciousness about one's education and exposure, both of which tend to be limited. On the other hand, limited possibilities also mean creating your own options.
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After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.
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Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.
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Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from something that happens in my head and my heart.
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I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no guidance in the high school at all. It was a mill town, and I never knew anyone who made their living from the arts. When you did go away to college, you went away to be something - an engineer, or a teacher, or a chemist.
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I think most of us are outsiders. And I think that's good because it makes you question things.
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I was born in New York City. But my family moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and half when we lived in Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up in small towns in Pennsylvania. I graduated from high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania.
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When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I was male or female. Also, I was a great admirer of E.B. White, so I may have thought that it would bring me luck to submit my first manuscript as 'E.L.' But if I were starting out today, I would use my first name.
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The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.
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I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and what happens to me, and from things I read.
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I think it's important to experience kindness so that you can experience it more in the future. I believe that patterns of emotional behavior are set down before adolescence. And I think that if you have not observed kindness, you will not recognize it. You have to experience kindness in order to be kind.
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Readers let me know that they like books that have more to them than meets the eye. Had they not let me know that, I never would have written 'The View From Saturday.'
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I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.
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I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.
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I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.
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When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. Then I taught science at a private girls' school. I had three children and waited until all three were in school before I started writing.
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Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.
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I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.
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Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.
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How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence.
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Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret us no fun. And although you dont want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.
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Every now and then, a person must do something simply because he wants to, because it seems to him worth doing. And that does not make it worthless or a waste of time.