Jacob Have I Loved Quotes

“To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“But then, oh, my blessed, he smiled. I guess from that moment I knew I was going to marry Joseph Wojtkiewicz--God, pope, three motherless children, unspellable name and all. For when he smiled, he looked like the kind of man who would sing to the oysters.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“All my dreams of leaving, but beneath them I was afraid to go. I had clung to them, to Rass, yes, even to my grandmother, afraid that if I loosened my fingers an iota, I would find myself once more cold and clean in a forgotten basket.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“Don't tell me no one ever gave you a chance. You don't need anything given to you. You can make your own chances. But first you have to know what you're after, my dear.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“I was quite sure I was crazy, and it was amazing that as soon as I admitted it, I became quite calm. There was nothing I could do about it. I seemed relatively harmless. After”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved: A Newbery Award Winner

“In February the weather sometimes gave us a vacation, in August, never. We just got up earlier every morning until finally we met ourselves going to bed.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“Thinking about myself as a crazy, independent old woman made me feel almost happy.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“He put down his roll and reached over and took her gnarled hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. "I'm trying to tell the child something only you and I can understand. How good it is to be old."
I watched her face go from being startled by his gesture to being pleased that he had somehow joined her side against me. Then she seemed to remember. She drew back her hand.
"We'll die," she said.
"Yes," he said. "But we'll be ready. The young ones never are.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“But I had never caused my parents 'a minute's worry'. Didn't they know that worry proves you care? Didn't they realize that I needed their worry to assure myself that I was something?”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“I was not happy in any way that would make sense to most people, but I was, for the first time in my life, deeply content with what life was giving me. Part”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved: A Newbery Award Winner

“so I told him jokes. “Do you know why radio announcers have tiny hands?” “Huh?” “Wee paws for station identification,” I would whoop.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved: A Newbery Award Winner

“It is a mysterious thing how cheerful people become in the face of disaster. My father whistled as he boarded up the windows, and my mother from time to time would call to him happily out the back door. She obviously was enjoying the unusual pleasure of having him home on a weekday morning. Tomorrow they might be ruined or dead, today they had each other.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“But I had never caused my parents "a minute's worry." Didn't they know that worry proves you care? Didn't they realize that I needed their worry to assure myself that I was worth something?”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“Whenever I am tempted to dismiss the poor or uneducated for their vulgar tastes, I see the face of old Auntie Braxton, as she stands stock still in front of our picket fence, lips parted to reveal her almost toothless gums, drinking in a polonaise as though it were heavenly nourishment.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved