Bruce Coville Quotes & Sayings

Still, the painful death of that unicorn had been satisfying to watch — Bruce Coville

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way to becoming a writer, including toy maker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually, I became an elementary teacher and worked with second and fourth graders. — Bruce Coville

Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas. But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams. — Bruce Coville

Most of all, I love being a storyteller. And yes, I want to make a good living, but I'm not always driven by the best commercial sense. — Bruce Coville

Luster, bring me home. — Bruce Coville

If you don't jump, the wings never come. — Bruce Coville

I loved teaching. I used to teach fourth grade. — Bruce Coville

Gadfangled girl things, always robbed me of my common sense. — Bruce Coville

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship. — Bruce Coville

In terms of age, I think I've covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel - and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people! — Bruce Coville

When I was a kid, I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way. — Bruce Coville

I grew up around the corner from my grandparents' dairy farm, which was three miles outside of a small town called Phoenix. — Bruce Coville

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors. — Bruce Coville

Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all ... Never was a chain that couldn't be broken. Sometimes its even a good idea. — Bruce Coville

I don't want Tiamat to go back," said Jeremy sullenly. "I want her to stay here with me."
Miss Priest laughed. It was not a horrible laugh at all. "What a terrible idea!" she said. "Why do you want her to stay?"
Because I love her. I don't want to lose her."
Miss Priest reached out and took his chin in her hand. She looked into his eyes. "You silly boy," she said. "Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people - they always go away, sooner or later. You can't hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they've touched you, if they're inside you, then they're still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart. — Bruce Coville

I feel like a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. Now that dream has come true, and I am able to make my living doing something I really love. — Bruce Coville

My writing works best when I remember that bookish child who adored reading and gear the work toward him. — Bruce Coville

There's lots of kinds of chains. You can't see most of them, the one's that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak, snap like this one did. That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all. — Bruce Coville

Family isn't blood," she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you. — Bruce Coville

Odds of a worm migration coming this way - about a billion to one. Odds of Elspeth improving her behavior without help - about the same. Sleep well, young friends. — Bruce Coville

When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.' — Bruce Coville

That sense of loss grew within the humans who had been left behind, left to live without unicorns. Even the ones who had never seen a unicorn, never heard of a unicorn, felt the passing of something sweet and wonderful. It was as if the air had surrendered a bit of its spice, the water a bit of its sparkle, the night a bit of its mystery. — Bruce Coville

Time becomes very weird. Sometimes it seems as if the hours are rushing by in a blur, the moment of performance hurtling toward me. Other times the clock seems to poke along like a sloth with chronic fatigue syndrome. — Bruce Coville

Hearts grow hard and weary. Pain spreads, and joy diminishes. Those who hated you hate you still, but those who loved you, or would have loved you, or wanted to love you but never had the chance, are being scraped hollow by a loss they don't understand. Come home. Please come home. We are withering without you. — Bruce Coville

Lights and darks. And suddenly i was here, where everything seems strange. And I don't know why. Like the Fox and the Crow, I don't know the whole story yet. But that's a good reason to go on, don't you think?"
"Go where?" said the Scarecrow.
"Go forward," said the girl. "See something. Learn something. Figure it out. We won't ever get the whole thing, I bet, but we'll get something. And then we'll have something to tell when we're old about what happened to us when we were young."
"Now?" said the Scarecrow. "Can you tell it now?"
"After," said the girl. "We have to have the BEFORE first, and that's life"
"And what's life?" said the scarecrow.
"Moving," said the girl. "Moving on. Shall we move on? Will you come with me? — Bruce Coville

Travel safe, travel well. May those who have gone before be always with you. — Bruce Coville

I know what I'm going to write for the next three years. It's frustrating, because if I get a good new idea, I have to put it aside. — Bruce Coville

Protective coloration ... you learn to use it to get along in the world if you want. Only I got sick of living in the box the world prescribed; it was far to small to hold me. So I knocked down a few walls. — Bruce Coville

How in the world do you tellyour wife that her mother was born a unicon? — Bruce Coville

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen. — Bruce Coville

You should make someone a wonderful husband."
Even the tips of Jamie's ears were crimson now. But instead of retreating, he clenched his jaw and looked directly into her eyes.
"I suppose I would," he said. "Are you interested? — Bruce Coville

Chains," said the Tinker, coming up behind her. "They bind us, whether we want them to or not. But a heart without chains would have nothing to hold it, might simply blow away. — Bruce Coville

All these guys picking on smart kids and calling them geeks and dweebs are going to grow up and want to know why they don't do something about the terrible state the world is in. I can tell you why. By the time they grow up, most of the kids who realy could have changed things are wrecked. — Bruce Coville

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work. — Bruce Coville

But, really, why does anyone create? You feel a ... a restlessness inside, a need to make something new, something no one has ever seen before. You want to add to the beauty and the richness of the world with a gift, an offering that is uniquely yours. It's an act of selfishness and generosity, all rolled into one. — Bruce Coville

I like fixing things," he said as he worked. "The world is always breaking, here and there, this way and that. Fix a bit of it, and I feel like I'm helping. — Bruce Coville

Wherever they may have come from, and wherever they may have gone,
unicorns live inside the true believer's heart.
Which means as long as we can dream, there will be unicorns. — Bruce Coville

I am ignoring you. In fact, I think you are a figment of my imagination. — Bruce Coville

The first draft of a story is the writer's clay. — Bruce Coville

Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV? — Bruce Coville

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me. — Bruce Coville