The Boxcar Librarian Quotes

“It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“Hearts starve as well as bodies:
Give us Bread, but give us Roses

-James Oppenheimer, “Bread and Roses” 1911”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“You look at woods full of aspen, and you think they’re like any other tree. You cut enough down and you clear the woods. But the aspen, they’re all connected to a root system. You can’t kill the thing by cutting one down, you have to pull the colony out by the roots,” Lewis said, and met her eyes. “The Company’s roots are so deep in Montana’s soil it would ruin the state to yank them out.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“The FWP showed that a country could be strong because of its diversity, not in spite of it.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“They all could see that fascism was a rolling tide that had reached America’s shores. The Ku Klux Klan’s membership rolls were bursting at the seams; desperate Americans were blaming anyone “with a hard to spell last name” for the fact that they didn’t have jobs; and prominent men like Henry Ford routinely spewed hateful anti-Jewish tirades while praising Adolf Hitler’s grand ideas.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“existence. Literature, theater, music—they remind us that good times have happened once and they’ll happen again. They let us laugh and cry and find a connection to each other. Art is what keeps us human even while starvation and desperation try to make animals of the best of us.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian

“Everyone had told her the grief would fade, and yet here she was on the second anniversary of his death and she still felt like she was bleeding out. Just very slowly.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian