Richard Peck Quotes

• “I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
  I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
  I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
  I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
  I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
  I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Only the nonreader fears books.”

  Richard Peck

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• “I read.. because one life is not enough”

  Richard Peck

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• “Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”

  Richard Peck

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• “We write by the light of every story we have ever read.”

  Richard Peck

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• “[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Read to your children
  Twenty minutes a day;
  You have the time,
  And so do they.
  Read while the laundry is in the machine;
  Read while the dinner cooks;
  Tuck a child in the crook of your arm
  And reach for the library books.
  Hide the remote,
  Let the computer games cool,
  For one day your children will be off to school;
  Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice;
  Let them hear their first tales
  In the sound of your voice.
  Read in the morning;
  Read over noon;
  Read by the light of
  Goodnight Moon.
  Turn the pages together,
  Sitting close as you'll fit,
  Till a small voice beside you says,
  "Hey, don't quit.”

  Richard Peck

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• “The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.”

  Richard Peck

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• “The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.”

  Richard Peck

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• “But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Grandma, how old is she?"
  "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.”

  Richard Peck

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• “This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.”

  Richard Peck

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• “September 11
  We thought we'd outdistanced history
  Told our children it was nowhere near;
  Even when history struck Columbine,
  It didn't happen here.
  
  We took down the maps in the classroom,
  And when they were safely furled,
  We told the young what they wanted to hear,
  That they were immune from a menacing world.
  
  But history isn't a folded-up map,
  Or an unread textbook tome;
  Now we know history's a fireman's child
  Waiting at home alone.”

  Richard Peck

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• “I read because one life isn’t enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.”

  Richard Peck

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• “If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one.”

  Richard Peck

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• “That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.”

  Richard Peck

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• “If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.”

  Richard Peck

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• “Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.”

  Richard Peck

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• “I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing.”

  Richard Peck

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• “I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready”

  Richard Peck

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• “Nobody but a reader becomes a writer.”

  Richard Peck

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• “...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.”

  Richard Peck

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• “I read because one life isn't enough.”

  Richard Peck

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