Top 56 Natalie Babbitt Quotes
#1. Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.
Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt
#2. But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.
Natalie Babbitt
#3. I have always loved astronomy, and being an astronomer once lurked in the back of my mind. But I was never good at algebra. In fact, I flunked it twice in high school.
Natalie Babbitt
#4. The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.
Natalie Babbitt
#5. My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.
Natalie Babbitt
#7. He wasn't crazy. How could he be? He was just
amazing. But she was struck dumb. All she could do was stare at him.
Natalie Babbitt
#8. I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact.
Natalie Babbitt
#9. Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside.
Natalie Babbitt
#12. Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
Natalie Babbitt
#13. 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 Babbitt
#14. We human beings do a lot of dumb things, and war is certainly the dumbest.
Natalie Babbitt
#15. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.
Natalie Babbitt
#16. The 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
#18. Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.
Natalie Babbitt
#19. I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.
Natalie Babbitt
#20. I'm not exactly sure what I'd do,
you know
but something interesting -
something that's all mine
something that would make
some kind of difference in the world.
Natalie Babbitt
#21. Midville's best street was High Street. It was up on a hill. Not much of a hill, to tell the truth, but in that part of the state, the flat south-central part, hills are not taken for granted.
Natalie Babbitt
#22. That's what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing.
Natalie Babbitt
#23. The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.
Natalie Babbitt
#24. When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore.
Natalie Babbitt
#25. I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.
Natalie Babbitt
#26. Life always seems to have worries, even if you own a big and beautiful house on the best street in town.
Natalie Babbitt
#27. They've really begun the war," he said to himself. "And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies!
Natalie Babbitt
#28. Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes.
Natalie Babbitt
#29. The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world.
Natalie Babbitt
#30. And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother's shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because - in spite of everything, she loved them.
Natalie Babbitt
#31. Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.
Natalie Babbitt
#32. You've got nothing that lasts, you know. That's not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy?
Natalie Babbitt
#33. And Winnie, laughing at him, lost the last of her alarm. They were friends, her friends. She was running away after all, but she was not alone. Closing
Natalie Babbitt
#34. And soon they were rolling on again, leaving Treegap behind, and as they went, the tinkling little melody of a music box drifted out behind them and was lost at last far down the road.
Natalie Babbitt
#36. [B]elieving, was her own true, promising friend once more.
Natalie Babbitt
#37. That doesn't sound like civil war to me," said Gaylen, turning back to his book with a smile. "It only sounds silly."
"Of course it's silly," said the Prime Minister impatiently. "But a lot of serious things start silly.
Natalie Babbitt
#38. Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had.
Natalie Babbitt
#39. A fresh breeze lifted Winnie's hair, and from somewhere in the village behind them a dog barked.
Natalie Babbitt
#40. My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school!
Natalie Babbitt
#41. For, through the twilight sounds of crickets and sighing trees, a faint, surprising wisp of music came floating to them and all three turned toward it, toward the wood.
Natalie Babbitt
#42. I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life.
Natalie Babbitt
#43. Outside, the night seemed poised on tiptoe, waiting, waiting, holding its breath for the storm.
Natalie Babbitt
#44. The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.
Natalie Babbitt
#46. I was having that dream again, the good one where we're all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.
Natalie Babbitt
#47. I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread.
Natalie Babbitt
#48. What is your suggestion for someone who wants to start writing? Be a reader. It's the only real way to learn how to tell a story.
Natalie Babbitt
#49. You really have to love words if you're going to be a writer, because as a writer, you certainly spend a lot of time with words.
Natalie Babbitt
#50. I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being.
Natalie Babbitt
#51. My mother always found me out. Always. She's been dead for thirty-five years, but I have this feeling that even now she's watching.
Natalie Babbitt
#52. Dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.
Natalie Babbitt
#53. For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist.
Natalie Babbitt
#54. I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw.
Natalie Babbitt
#56. Right 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 Babbitt
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
