Betsy Byars Quotes & Sayings

I have cried over myself a hundred times this summer, she thought, I have wept over my big feet and my skinny legs and my nose, I have even cried over my stupid shoes, and now when I have true sadness there are no tears left. — Betsy Byars

My own hobbies are rather quiet. I like to read and do needlework, and I love animals. — Betsy Byars

The real reason I had wanted to grow up, the main reason I had been willing to even consider becoming an adult, was so I could have as many pets as I wanted. — Betsy Byars

When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I'll have a book. — Betsy Byars

I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion. — Betsy Byars

That was the trouble with life - it never quite fulfilled its promises. — Betsy Byars

My husband has some very interesting hobbies, and through him, I've learned to fly and earned my pilot's license. Together, we fly all over the United States. Since our children are all grown now, we also travel a great deal in Europe, but we take commercial flights because our plane is not really equipped to make transatlantic flights. — Betsy Byars

It was as if her life was a huge kaleidoscope, and the kaleidoscope had been turned and now everything was changed. The same stones shaken, no longer made the same design. — Betsy Byars

The people you don't know turn out to be exactly like the people you do know, same faults, same everything. — Betsy Byars

Writing is like anything - baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails. — Betsy Byars

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me. — Betsy Byars

I usually get the title for a book first, and I type it up immediately. I sit there and look at it and admire it, and I think to myself, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I'l have a book. It is such a pleasurable moment that I type many more title pages than I could ever use. — Betsy Byars

Early in my career, I decided not to do sequels. I know that children enjoy them, but I valued the feeling that this was the only time I would write about these characters. I felt it gave me an added incentive to do my best by them, to tell readers everything I knew, to hold nothing back. — Betsy Byars

I think how you look is the most important thing in the world. If you look cute, you are cute; if you look smart, you are smart, and if you don't look like anything, you aren't anything. — Betsy Byars