The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give.
Natalie BabbittRight after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy.
Natalie BabbittThe first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
Natalie BabbittStill-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.
Natalie BabbittThe only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure.
Natalie Babbitt