Mac Barnett Quotes

#1. Mac [Barnett ] and I have been friends for more than ten years. We met working at an educational nonprofit. And we have been pranking each other the whole time. It's our own version of a prank war. We thought we would channel some of that energy into writing a book.

Jory John

#2. Mac [Barnett]and I both had times when we moved, started new schools, and we know how hard that was, figuring out your identity and who you're going to be at the new school.

Jory John

#3. This was so unfunny, Steve had to laugh.

Mac Barnett

#4. Not only is a good prank harmless, but, like a good story, it reveals an essential truth that would otherwise be hidden.

Mac Barnett

#5. Every Librarian is a highly trained agent. An expert in intelligence, counterintelligence, Boolean searching, and hand-to-hand combat.

Mac Barnett

#6. A clue! From M!"
"Who's M?"
"Maybe M is for Mackintosh! Maybe Grabes ans Mackintosh are in cahoots!"
"Or maybe M is for Mom. Also, who says 'cahoots'?

Mac Barnett

#7. I read The Stinky Cheese Man as an adult. I missed that book when I was a kid. I grew up mostly with books bought at yard sales, picture books from the fifties to 1975, which is really a lucky thing.

Mac Barnett

#8. Kevin Cornell and I have worked together a bunch.

Mac Barnett

#9. Remove the mixture from the

Nikki Adams

#10. The Giant rested back in his chair. "You've some stories left," he said. " I can smell them on your skin.

Brian Patten

#11. I love those adult writers with the pranking ethos, [Don] DeLillo and [Donald] Barthelme and David Foster Wallace. I don't see any reason not to bring those kinds of influences to bear on books for children.

Mac Barnett

#12. I was on this bridge overlooking the carpet ... I think it went all the way back to Oregon.

Steven Cojocaru

#13. I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing.

Mac Barnett

#14. Pranking exposes the truth that underneath this appearance of order is joy, laughter, and disorder.

Mac Barnett

#15. Mother and daughter got on very well indeed, with a deep affection founded on almost complete misunderstanding.

Mary Stewart

#16. We put authors on such a pedestal, and it's a moment that humanizes the whole thing, and lends an absurdity to what otherwise is a "please sit with your hands on your lap" kind of event.

Mac Barnett

#17. Dear Mom,
I won't be home this weekend because I'm wanted for treason and I have to clear my name. Also, I took the last Sprite from the fridge.
Love, Steve

Mac Barnett

#18. Pranking is a great way to indicate the underlying absurdities of the world.

Mac Barnett

#19. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

C.S. Lewis

#20. Too often we tell kids pleasant stories devoid of truth, and stories without truth are not good stories. Our audience deserves more from us.

Mac Barnett

#21. A good antidote to nostalgia is to go home, and then you remember why you left.

Michelle Gomez

#22. Make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#23. Your yearning for God must supersede all other desires. It must be like a gnawing hunger and a burning thirst.

Billy Graham

#24. In Munich, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a rare European NATO leader who has a clear picture of events, told Merkel that the choice was "surrender or arm Ukraine" - to no effect.

Anonymous

#25. It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace
the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

#26. Dana was what Steve called a "silent partner" in the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency. Being a silent partner meant that Dana didn't carry a business card, that his name didn't appear on the company letterhead, and he wanted nothing to do with the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency.

Mac Barnett

#27. I'd much rather have a book that a few people love intensely than a book that a lot of people like okay.

Mac Barnett

#28. You are the heir to the Kingdom. Prosperity is your birth right and you hold the key to more abundance in every area of your life then you can possibly imagine.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

#29. I'm not sure we're presenting ourselves as real role models. I don't think literature has ever been a real place for role models.

Mac Barnett

#30. And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.

Ted Hughes

#31. Danger is the snack food of a true sleuth.

Mac Barnett

#32. It is pleasant to recall past troubles.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#33. It's a sort of patronizing idea that literature for children has to feature role models of exemplary behavior. I think not only is that bogus, but it leads to really boring books.

Mac Barnett

#34. I've seen a lot of shows, but I can't possibly cram in everything that I'd like to, and it's exhausting trying to.

Mathew Baynton