Top 100 Rebecca Stead Quotes
#1. I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.
Rebecca Stead
#2. I wish I could see what would have hapenned if I hadn't told. You told me once that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two. So now there's a universe in which I kept my mouth shut. But I can't see what it looks like.
Rebecca Stead
#3. People act like riddles are hard, but real life is harder. In real life, there are always more than two doors -Sherm
Rebecca Stead
#4. I think things hit me very hard, and I wish I had allowed things to roll off my back a little bit more.
Rebecca Stead
#5. Mr Heilbroner, as you certainly know, is a minor. We can use the principal's office for a few minutes so that you can brief me about whatever allegations have been made. But of course you can't speak with Mr Heilbroner himself until his parents have been notified. Would you follow me, please?
Rebecca Stead
#6. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#7. I would never look a gift horse in the mouth. I've had some lovely homemade earrings and, recently, a wall hanging made in the style of Georges Seurat.
Rebecca Stead
#8. Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn't something that happens to you. It's something you make yourself, all the time.
Rebecca Stead
#9. When you were small, you would swing yourself up legs-first, but now you have to stick your head through the opening in the floor and then hoist the rest. You certainly have grown, you tell yourself.
Rebecca Stead
#10. But at the exact same time I got nervous about that, I also got this other feeling, which I can only describe of as love for Annemarie's elevator.
Rebecca Stead
#11. This is the world of pretend. We are artists and we are servants of the stage, and I take both jobs very seriously. As artists, we work as a collective - all for one and one for all. As servants, we work for thos who venture out alone, otherwise known as performers.
Rebecca Stead
#12. And if you've got a voice, you might as well use it, right?
Rebecca Stead
#13. I loved reading all kinds of books, but I particularly loved books like 'Red Planet' by Robert Heinlein, which very few people read anymore but is a wonderful science fiction story.
Rebecca Stead
#14. It soaked into me like water into sand, fast and heavy-making.
Rebecca Stead
#15. Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.
Rebecca Stead
#16. Anyway,' Sherm said quietly, 'people fake stuff all the time.
Rebecca Stead
#17. The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'
Rebecca Stead
#19. I knew it. I just knew it." We had been robbed after all.
Rebecca Stead
#20. I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.
Rebecca Stead
#21. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#22. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#23. Anyone who's familiar with my writing schedule knows that there is always plenty of time between books for me!
Rebecca Stead
#25. Isn't that the whole idea?' I asked. 'It's supposed to stop them from being criminals!' She shook her head. 'That's not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren't even people anymore.
Rebecca Stead
#26. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Rebecca Stead
#27. Mostly what I try to do is build emotion. Only I'd prefer not to do it by telling you about emotion but by pushing that emotion down.
Rebecca Stead
#28. I grew up mostly an only child. My dad remarried when I was a teenager. And then I had two stepbrothers. And then my dad had a second child. So I have a brother from the time I was 15. But I really grew up feeling like an only child.
Rebecca Stead
#29. And books all over the floor, some stocked in piles, some worn-looking, some brand-new, some splayed upside down, some sliding off the pink bedside table next to the lamp with the orange fabric shade.
Rebecca Stead
#30. I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
Rebecca Stead
#31. The guy is looney,' Belle said thoughtfully, 'but also generally polite. Polite is always worth something.
Rebecca Stead
#32. Common sense is just a name for the way we're used to thinking.
Rebecca Stead
#33. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#34. 'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend.
Rebecca Stead
#35. I personally find the ideas that girls need to cover their shoulders in school a little bit strange ... when we're telling girls, you know, 'You have to cover your shoulders because otherwise you're a distraction to other people in your class,' probably something is wrong.
Rebecca Stead
#36. Nice tights, I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.
Rebecca Stead
#37. Why don't you and Patrick actually talk to each other?" Tab said. Em looked up. "Are you demented? And say what?
Rebecca Stead
#38. I had watched them trade best friends, start wars, cry, trade back, make treaties, squeal and grab each other's arms in this fake-excited way, et cetera ...
Rebecca Stead
#39. During the week,I'm really focused on writing and output. Sunday is a day when I really try not to write at all.
Rebecca Stead
#40. Love is when your heart wraps around something and won't let go.
Rebecca Stead
#42. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#43. I do try to write in ways that reflect reality, and I think that reality is rarely simple.
Rebecca Stead
#44. That's what life is. Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn't something that happens to you. It's something you make yourself, all the time." -Celeste
Rebecca Stead
#45. Who's the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who's horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?
Rebecca Stead
#47. From age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses, going to the store. I really wanted to write about that: the independence that's a little bit scary but also a really positive thing in a lot of ways.
Rebecca Stead
#48. I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?
Rebecca Stead
#49. On Sunday, I think the most important thing for me is to just turn my brain off. The idea of not trying is the key, because that's where you're relaxed enough to let your brain make new connections.
Rebecca Stead
#50. I am basically in awe of every family's ability to make decisions for their kids.
Rebecca Stead
#51. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#52. Every published writer suffers through that first draft because most of the time, that's a disappointment.
Rebecca Stead
#53. I think that when you don't know, you should just wait until you do.
Rebecca Stead
#54. People don't want to think about it.' 'I can see why,' I said. 'It makes my head hurt.' 'Still, you did better than most people. You're a pretty smart kid.' I rolled my eyes. 'Gee, thanks.
Rebecca Stead
#55. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#56. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#57. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love.
Rebecca Stead
#58. We have lunch at ten-forty-five, Colin said. A stupidly early lunch. At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period.
Rebecca Stead
#59. I like the idea of a world, even within a big giant city, where you're not anonymous. You have an identity, and that's an identity that's known just sort of by shopkeepers. I felt that as a kid, and I loved it.
Rebecca Stead
#60. Love is when you like someone so much that you can't just call it "like," so you have to call it "love.
Rebecca Stead
#61. I felt vulnerable and very much between friends. I remember walking down the hallway and thinking I had no way of knowing what was coming, literally. This wasn't because I had some horrific bullying story, but because of a steady drip of negativity.
Rebecca Stead
#62. He nodded like he felt sorry for me and my stupid brain. 'I think that's probably because of your common sense. You can't accept the idea of arriving before you leave, the idea that every moment is happening at the same time, that it's us who are moving - ' Enough was enough.
Rebecca Stead
#63. My books tend to have a lot of questions in them, and they tend to avoid black and white, for lack of a better metaphor.
Rebecca Stead
#64. Em: I'm falling apart. That's what I'm trying to tell you
Bridge: You're not falling apart. You're scared.
Em: Isn't that the same thing?
Bridge: No
Rebecca Stead
#65. It's crazy the things a person can pretend not to notice.
Rebecca Stead
#66. Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don't cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It's a lose-lose situation.
Rebecca Stead
#67. You can have it all, but you can't have it all at once.
Rebecca Stead
#68. Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.
Rebecca Stead
#69. Life was anything but fast, in your opinion. If it went any more slowly, time would probably start to run backward.
Rebecca Stead
#70. I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.
Rebecca Stead
#71. It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone's doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.
Rebecca Stead
#72. My kids really like food, and they like to cook, so it's a lot of fun to shop with them.
Rebecca Stead
#73. I think that kids are a wonderful, wonderful reader to have in your head.
Rebecca Stead
#75. I don't know. I just feel stuck, like I'm afraid to take any steps, in case they're the wrong ones.
Rebecca Stead
#76. Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.
Rebecca Stead
#77. As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.
Rebecca Stead
#78. There was no black line separating Colorado from Utah. There was no black line between friendship and whatever might come next.
Rebecca Stead
#79. Try really, really hard not to judge your own work too harshly.
Rebecca Stead
#81. Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.
Rebecca Stead
#82. I read a whole lot as a child, and, of course, I still read children's books.
Rebecca Stead
#83. There's this trouble with books for me because I'm terrible at thinking of titles. The truth is, even with the titles that I've landed on in the end, they always feel wrong. I think it's because of this whole problem of having to package your book in a certain way.
Rebecca Stead
#84. I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind? -Sherm
Rebecca Stead
#85. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#86. Maybe it should just make you feel lucky. Yeah, you were really lucky you didn't die after the accident. But you were a lot luckier to be born in the first place. So if you're here for a reason, maybe we all are.
Rebecca Stead
#87. Probably because I really love this bookmaking and storytelling world, I'd been thinking for years about the possibility of becoming a literary agent.
Rebecca Stead
#88. I sneaked a little bunch of grapes, which I love but can't ever have, because Mom doesn't like the way the grape pickers are treated in California and she refuses to buy them. *
Rebecca Stead
#89. I think we must all feel that there are people out there who know things about our young selves, you know, our early, early lives, that no one else can ever know.
Rebecca Stead
#90. I've met seven homeschooling families through many, many extracurricular activities such as fencing. I don't have a point of view of homeschooling. For some families, homeschooling works.
Rebecca Stead
#91. 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.
Rebecca Stead
#92. I try to remember what it was like to be a kid in New York. I lived in different parts of my childhood in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, where 'When You Reach Me' is set, and also in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.
Rebecca Stead
#93. I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.
Rebecca Stead
#94. I try to write about internal experience versus the external self. I like to present ideas, but not package them neatly.
Rebecca Stead
#95. If you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy
Rebecca Stead
#96. Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.
Rebecca Stead
#97. It is, actually," Sherm said, looking her straight in the eyes, the way he had during the intruder drill. "Best thing ever.
Rebecca Stead
#98. Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.
Rebecca Stead
#99. There was a boy in my building who was my best friend when I was growing up. There was also a mysterious person on my corner who we called the Laughing Man.
Rebecca Stead
#100. Tab's mom said that when people reached out to hurt your feelings, it was because they secretly felt they deserved to be talked to that way. She said that they had 'long, hard roads ahead' and that you should just wish them well.
Rebecca Stead
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