Sid Fleischman Quotes

#1. When you've been in life-threatening situations, you become aware that life is not for ever.

Curtis Jackson

#2. Give weather reports. It helps the reality of a scene if foghorns are blowing or kites are in the sky on a windy afternoon or the day's so hot wallpaper is peeling off the walls.

Sid Fleischman

#3. I struggle to keep my hard, expressionless mask in place. The doctor's most powerful weapon has always been his particular brand of brutal honesty. Bruises fade, but words like that fester.

Cristin Terrill

#4. Oh shut up - you know damn good and well there can be a hundred people in the room, 99 of them rushing up to say they love your dress, but until that one, the one you wore it for, says something, you might as well be wearing a trash bag.

S.E. Hall

#5. In my first story, 'Mr. Mysterious & Company' ... I was asked to take out some of the humor because editors were afraid reviewers would dismiss the book as a joke. Today, humor is enjoyed and no longer regarded as literary brummagem.

Sid Fleischman

#6. Humor is the oxygen of children's literature. There's a lot of competition for children's time, but even kids who hate to read want to read a funny book.

Sid Fleischman

#7. What was he looking for, a prince in fine velvets and a crown cocked on his head? Was it clothes that made a prince, Jemmy wondered, just as rags made a street boy?

Sid Fleischman

#8. You're only as old as you think you are.

A. Rochelle

#9. I expected him to say, 'Hang in there' or something like that. It took me an hour to talk him into giving me another chance!

Mickey Mantle

#10. Cognitive science

Stu Dunn

#11. We don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.

Mark Twain

#12. Of course God already knows what I need. The question is - do I know?

Elizabeth Gilbert

#13. I am Prince Horace!"
"And I'm the Grand Turnip of China!" cutwater snickered.
"Dim-witted villains!" shouted the Prince. "I command you to turn us loose.

Sid Fleischman

#14. I suspect that the framers of the Bill of Rights have long since rolled over in their graves.

Jay Parini

#15. There are few professions whose primary objective is to advance the cause of humanity rather than simply to make money or accrue power. Among this limited group of humanitarians I would number teachers, nurses, bookstore owners, and bartenders.

Jack McDevitt

#16. For me, family has always come first.

Candace Parker

#17. The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever
they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work.

Sid Fleischman

#18. Joy was not the raw material of humor ... The dark source was sorrow.

Sid Fleischman

#19. I am astonished, when I pause to think about it, to discover myself to be an author of humorous novels for children. Or an author at all. I had a childhood much like everyone else's. What went wrong?

Sid Fleischman

#20. I don't see any reason to let law interfere with justice around here. We never did before.

Sid Fleischman

#21. As an adult, I'll give a writer 50 pages. If the book doesn't interest me in 50 pages, I'll say the heck with it - there are just too many other things to read. A child won't give you 50 pages.

Sid Fleischman

#22. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'

Henry Hazlitt

#23. We Chinese are instinctively democratic, and Dr. Sun's objective of universal suffrage evokes from all Chinese a ready and unhesitating response.

Chiang Kai-shek

#24. Words were a conjuration, and their charms had begun to bewitch him.

Sid Fleischman

#25. Jemmy dipped the quill in beet juice and continued scribbling. "I'll tell him you've got reserved seats in Hell."
"Aye! That's the ticket!

Sid Fleischman

#26. Adult novels are as ephemeral as newspapers. Children's books stay in print for decades.

Sid Fleischman