Top 100 Gail Carson Levine Quotes
#1. I loved fairy tales as a kid. I've always been drawn to fantasy. They're always exciting. There's never a dull moment. I just love the embellishments and the magical stuff. It's such fun to work with and to re-imagine your own way.
Gail Carson Levine
#2. Contemporary fiction is the hardest for me because I am not really in the popular culture - I don't watch TV.
Gail Carson Levine
#5. In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.
Gail Carson Levine
#6. I rode all day.
I cried all night.
The moon didn't glow.
The sun didn't rise.
A comet blazed
Between my eyes.
West and South,
Wind and rain.
Every way is
Just the same.
Pray give me a box
To hide inside.
Pray give me a spade
To dig my own grave.
Gail Carson Levine
#9. Perhaps you couldn't help being angry... but you could certainly stop yourself from repaying one offense with another.
Gail Carson Levine
#10. I grew up in New York City. In elementary school, I was a charter member of the Scribble Scrabble Club, and in high school, my poems were published in an anthology of student poetry.
Gail Carson Levine
#11. I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.
Gail Carson Levine
#14. Everyone else reached the Shores of Sleep, but I remained oceans away.
Gail Carson Levine
#16. After two stories, I blew out my light. The night was clear. My ceiling was the sky and an eyelash of the moon. By shifting from side to side, I made my hammock swing me into sleep.
Gail Carson Levine
#18. In that moment I found a power beyond any I'd had before, a will and a determination I would never have need if not for Lucinda, a fortitude I hadn't been able to find for a lesser cause.
Gail Carson Levine
#19. It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.
Gail Carson Levine
#21. When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you
Gail Carson Levine
#22. But the lost one is with you.
Her tenderness strengthens you,
Her gaiety uplifts you,
Her honor purifies you.
More than memory,
The lost one is found.
Gail Carson Levine
#23. Everyone called it losing Mother, but she wasn't lost. She was gone, and no matter where I went - another town, another country, Fairyland, or Gnome Caverns - I wouldn't find her
Gail Carson Levine
#25. I didn't want to be a writer. First I wanted to act, and then I wanted to be a painter like my big sister.
Gail Carson Levine
#28. If a big person invests time in reading, kids learn reading is important, the child is important, words are important, stories are important.
Gail Carson Levine
#33. Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.
Gail Carson Levine
#34. The Writer's Oath
I promise solemnly:
1. to write as often and as much as I can,
2. to respect my writing self, and
3. to nurture the writing of others.
I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.
Gail Carson Levine
#35. I wrote as a kid, but I never wanted to be a writer, particularly. I had been drawing and painting for years and loved that.
Gail Carson Levine
#36. She asks why I like her. Might as well ask Why I breathe. Maybe tomorrow I won't Breathe or like her Anymore. Maybe tomorrow the tides Will stop. Maybe tomorrow will bring No more rainbows. Maybe tomorrow She will stop Asking useless questions.
Gail Carson Levine
#38. I have a very vivid memory of the way my parents spoke, and the 50's that I grew up in are closer to the 20's, I think, than today in many, many ways.
Gail Carson Levine
#39. Luck was with me. I saw no spiders.
Luck was against me. I saw no specters.
Gail Carson Levine
#41. I was no hero. The dearest wishes of my heart were for safety and tranquility. The world was a perilous place, wrong for the likes of me.
Gail Carson Levine
#42. 'EIla Enchanted' began in a marvelous writing course at New York City's The New School.
Gail Carson Levine
#43. AhthOOn SSyng!" I said. "That's farewell."
"It sounds evil."
"It is," I answered, and we parted.
Gail Carson Levine
#45. My interest in the theater led me to my first writing experience as an adult. My husband David wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book for a children's musical, 'Spacenapped' that was produced by a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn.
Gail Carson Levine
#46. I'd never before been infatuated with someone living, someone real.
Gail Carson Levine
#48. If beginnings terrify you, or if you just plain don't like writing them, or if they bore you, skip 'em.
Gail Carson Levine
#50. To pretend I was sliding down the stair rail." He laughed again. " You should have done it. I would have caught you at the bottom.
Gail Carson Levine
#51. I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing.
Gail Carson Levine
#52. I had to write something and couldn't think of a plot, so I decided to write a Cinderella story because it already had a plot! Then, when I thought about Cinderella's character, I realized that she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me, and I would hate her before I finished ten pages.
Gail Carson Levine
#55. Although we didn't invite Lucinda, she arrived anyway-with a gift.
"No need," Char and I chimed together.
"Remember when you were a squirrel," Mandy said.
Gail Carson Levine
#56. Encourage children to write their own stories, and then don't rain on their parade. Don't say, 'That's not true.' Applaud flights of fantasy. Help with spelling and grammar, but stand up and cheer the use of imagination.
Gail Carson Levine
#60. Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.
Gail Carson Levine
#62. The fast fliers are not disgraced." Queen Ree reached up for the missing tiara. "She saved us, but she's with him now."
Vidia was complicated, two fairies in one, a loyal traitor.
Gail Carson Levine
#64. But my last conscious thought was an image of Prince Char when he'd caught the bridle of Sir Stephan's horse. His face had been close to mine. Two curls had spilled onto his forehead. A few freckles dusted his nose, and his eyes said he was sorry for me to go.
Gail Carson Levine
#65. I trust you to find the good in me, but the bad I must be sure you don't overlook.
Gail Carson Levine
#66. Perhaps we can come here together someday. By the way, you're a month older than the last time I saw you. Are you still too young to marry.
Gail Carson Levine
#67. My good ideas are shy. But if they see that I treat the stupid ideas with respect, they come forward.
Gail Carson Levine
#70. My favorite of my books is DAVE AT NIGHT, because it's loosely based on my father's childhood in an orphanage.
Gail Carson Levine
#71. Most of my job life has had to do with welfare, first helping people find work and then as an administrator. The earlier experience was more direct and satisfying, and I enjoy thinking that a bunch of people somewhere are doing better today than they might have done if not for me.
Gail Carson Levine
#72. I saw the other loners the way everyone else did-as unappealing, as to be avoided at all costs. If I hung out with one of them, I thought, my unpopular status would get worse, not better, because it would be magnified by association.
Gail Carson Levine
#74. As a child, I loved fairy tales because the story, the what-comes-next, is paramount. As an adult, I'm fascinated by their logic and illogic.
Gail Carson Levine
#75. Father asks frequently in his letters whether I fancy any Ayorthaian young lady or any in our acquaintance at home. I say no I suppose I'm confessing another fault: pride. I don't want him to know that I love if my affections are not returned
Gail Carson Levine
#78. Oak, granite,
Lilies by the road,
Remember me?
I remember you.
Clouds brushing
Clover hills,
Remember me?
Sister, child,
Grown tall,
Remember me?
I remember you.
Gail Carson Levine
#80. I'm solitary as a pulled tooth, Lonely as an unwelcome truth, Lost as a minnow out of school, A genius in a crop of fools.
Gail Carson Levine
#81. I wonder how Admat can be everywhere. Is he in my sandal? Or is he my sandal itself? Why would a god bother to be a sandal? Does he wear shoes or sandals himself, invisible ones?
Gail Carson Levine
#82. No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden.
My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.
Gail Carson Levine
#83. Char saw me. Over the shoulder of his partner, he mouthed, "Wait for me."
I grew roots. An earthquake could not have moved me. The clock struck a quarter before eleven. If it had struck the end of the world, I'd have stayed as I was.
Gail Carson Levine
#84. Sorcerers believe that an action taken for the right reasons has an unreasonable chance of success.
Gail Carson Levine
#85. I never saw a lad, page or prince, so eager to learn to do a thing right.
Gail Carson Levine
#86. To me, merely and pretty were words that had nothing to do with each other. Pretty went with miraculously, and merely belonged in another paragraph entirely.
Gail Carson Levine
#87. I wished she'd never stop squeezing me. I wished I could spend the rest of my life as a child, being slightly crushed by someone who loved me.
Gail Carson Levine
#88. Curse made a rebel of me. Or perhaps I was that way naturally. Mother rarely insisted I do anything. Father
Gail Carson Levine
#89. I found that I was much more interested in writing and that I didn't like the illustrating at all. I had always been the hardest on myself when I drew and painted. I am not hard on myself when I write. I like what I write, so it is a much happier process.
Gail Carson Levine
#90. ... He was only a person on the outside and... his insides were ashes mixed with coins and a brain.
Gail Carson Levine
#91. I know all about you," Char announced after we'd taken a few more steps. "You do? How could you?" "Your cook and our cook meet at the market. She talks about you." He looked sideways at me. "Do you know much about me?
Gail Carson Levine
#92. I had been able to break the curse myself. I'd had to have reason enough, love enough to do it, to find the will and the strength.
Gail Carson Levine
#93. My contrariness kept Char laughing, and his goodness kept me in love.
Gail Carson Levine
#95. [Fairies] had faults, but they were perfectly themselves. Vidia, for instance, who was the fastest flier, didn't care about anybody but herself. She was by no means perfect, but she was perfectly Vidia. Fairies were concentrated, like bouillon cubes.
Gail Carson Levine
#96. Would you favor me with a dance?" Over all the others I was his choice! I curtsied, and he took my hand. Our hands knew each other. Char looked at me, startled. "Have we met before, Lady?
Gail Carson Levine
#98. Most of the authors I liked were dead, so it didn't seem like a safe occupation.
Gail Carson Levine
#99. Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander.
Father.
Gail Carson Levine
#100. I love you now ... I love you immortally, even if I die and there is nothing left of me.
Gail Carson Levine
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
