Rebecca Stead Quotes

When you trust your readers, you're hoping they will see what you see. Not every book is for every person.

I think I'm still fed by my childhood experience of reading, even though obviously I'm reading many books now and a lot of them are books for children but I feel like childhood reading is this magic window and there's something that you sort of carry for the rest of your life when a book has really changed you as a kid, or affected you, or even made you recognize something about yourself.

The truth is that I think that most people, and most people in this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger', are really doing their best but they're stumbling all over the place and they're hurting each other deliberately and by accident.

I love a book that makes me ask questions about what I think or how I see the world or how I feel, so I hope that 'Goodbye, Stranger' is that kind of book for some people.

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.

Pajamas are good for the soul.

Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.

I feel like there are stages in many, many people's childhoods when you don't have one good friend. It can happen a lot in sixth and seventh grade because that's when things are changing so quickly. It's like a desperate dash for some kind of acceptable identity, and it can get ugly.

I think if you can take something out and it doesn't change the book, it doesn't need to be there.

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to.

I don't know. I just feel stuck, like I'm afraid to take any steps, in case they're the wrong ones.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.

I feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.

Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.

I remember in junior high school, which is what we called it, suddenly I was looking at myself, almost through other people's eyes, and thought: how does the world see me? So that was one of the things I was really interested in, when I was writing Goodbye Stranger.

Like when that man was running down Broadway stark naked and we all had to eat in the cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.

Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.

Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

There's a great temptation to throw things in, as you put it, that you think are neat, or that you have a very clear, specific memory of and think you could do a good job writing about. What I find is that it's like a seed you plant. You can try it, and if it will grow and connect with other ideas in the book, and you can see connections that you can actually realize on the page, then you're allowed to leave it in. But if it just kind of lies there and doesn't really add up to anything or there's no chemistry with everything else going on in the book, then you have to take it out.

For me one of the most important things is not feeling like you have to protect yourself if you're with a real friend.

I don't know whether I could visit a new neighborhood now and have a kid's set of observations about a place. I no longer can really think like a child, though I can remember thinking like one.

Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.

If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.

Many of the books on my list are, in my opinion, amazing. Some I didn't like. But I give them all five stars, because stars make people - including me -- happy.

Einstein says common sense is just habit of thought. It's how we're used to thinking about things, but a lot of the time it just gets in the way.

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

I think the idea that in a riddle there are two answers or two doors and that you have to pick the right one is almost sort of delightful to kids who are making so many choices every day and who often don't know for a while if they've made the right one. It's not as if you make a choice and then *ding* you have some sense of "oh, this is perfect and I'm happy" - it's never that simple.

I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?

But every person has to learn to accept what has happened in the past. Without bitterness. Or there is no point in continuing with life.

She's called the secretary, but as far as I can tell she basically runs the school.

I think that's why I wanted to write about seventh grade. I'd say seventh grade is a time when kids are really exploring a lot and becoming aware of the world around them in a deeper way. And they just have sort of have a wider appreciation of what's happening around them. They are seeing themselves from the outside more than they had before.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

When something works for you, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that it will work for someone else.

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.

Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.

Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.

I like to talk about weirdness. We all have strange thoughts and ideas, and when you really trust someone you can express them. And they can express them to you, and that's one of the joys of life.

If I'm afraid of someone on the street, I'll turn to him (it's always a boy) and say, "Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?" This is my way of saying to the person, "I see you as a friend, and there is no need to hurt me or take my stuff. Also, I don't even have a watch and I am probably not worth mugging." So far, it's worked like gangbusters... And I've discovered that most people I'm afraid of are actually very friendly.

Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.