Avery > Avery's Quotes

“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.”
― Lemony Snicket

“The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“Trapped mainly by wanting things to be exactly as they are, only better ”
― Brian Andreas

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“Have you ever watched the jet cars race on the boulevard?...I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly...If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He'd say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
― G.K. Chesterton