Karen Hesse Quotes & Sayings

When I rode the train west,
I went looking for something,
but I didn't see anything wonderful.
I didn't see anything better than what I already had.
Home. — Karen Hesse

When Ma died, I didn't know how to go on, either. I don't know how. I don't feel the same know, not exactly. Now that I see that one day comes after another and you get through them one measure at a time. But I'd like to go, not like Fonda Nye, I don't want to die, I just want to go, away, out of the dust. — Karen Hesse

Young readers are the most challenging, demanding, and rewarding of audiences. Adults often ask why I write for the younger set. My reply: 'I can't think of anyone I'd rather write for.' — Karen Hesse

And she knows how to come into a home
and not step on the toes of a ghost. — Karen Hesse

The way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up. — Karen Hesse

The work of one author or artist may stimulate another author or artist to push the edge, to take the risk, to go where the field hasn't gone before. The result -very exciting children's literature and art ... exciting both for the professional and for the intended audience, the children. — Karen Hesse

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books. — Karen Hesse

My father and I, we can't soothe each other. I'm too young, he's too old, and we don't know how to talk anymore if we ever did — Karen Hesse

To those who swear our young are on the road to perdition take comfort in this- every generation has felt somewhat the same for two or three thousand years and the still the world goes on. — Karen Hesse

While growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I dreamed of becoming many things: an archaeologist, an ambassador, an actor, an author. — Karen Hesse

The schoolhouse, on this sunlit morning, has begun to take on the scent of girls with wind-blown hair, with seeds in their pockets, with road-hardened feet. — Karen Hesse

Each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb. — Karen Hesse

Now Livie's gone west, out of the dust, on her way to California, where the wind takes a rest sometimes. And I'm wondering what kind of friend I am, wanting my feet on that road to another place,instead of Livie's. — Karen Hesse

I play songs that have only the pattern of my self in them and you hum along suporting me. You are the companion to myself. The mirror with my mother'e eyes. — Karen Hesse

As long as you live, it is never too late to make amends. Take my advice, child. Don't waste your precious life with regrets and sorrow. Find a way to make right what was wrong, and then move on. — Karen Hesse

The morning with the whole day waiting,
full of promise,
the night
of quiet, of no expectations, of rest.
And the certainty of home, the one I live in,
and the one
that lives in me. — Karen Hesse

Anyway, this time I caught her in the slow stirring of biscuits, her mind on other things, but anyhow, she was distracted enough, I was determined enough,this time I got just what I wanted. Permission to play at the Palace. — Karen Hesse

We might not belong to anyone else in this whole world. But us Faulstiches,we belong to each other. — Karen Hesse

Daddy named me Billie Jo. He wanted a boy. Instead, he got a long legged girl with a wide mouth with cheekbones like bicycle handles. He got a redheaded, freckle faced, narrow-hipped girl with a fondness for apples and hunger for playing fierce piano. — Karen Hesse

And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me. — Karen Hesse

It almost rained Saturday.The clouds hung low over the farm.The air felt thick.It smelled like rain.
In town,the sidewalks got damp, that was all. — Karen Hesse

I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything. — Karen Hesse

I have a hunger,
for more than food.
I have a hunger
bigger than Joyce City.
I want tongues to tie, and
eyes to shine at me
like they do at Mad Dog Craddock.
Course they never will,
not with my hands all scarred up,
looking like the earth itself,
all parched and rough and cracking,
but if I played right enough,
maybe they would see past my hands.
Maybe they could feel at ease with me again,
and maybe then,
I could feel at east with myself. — Karen Hesse

Sometimes, a flame can be utterly extinguished.
Sometimes, a flame can shrink and waver, but
sometimes a flame refuses to go out. It flares up from the faintest ember to
illuminate the darkness,
to burn in spite of overwhelming odds. — Karen Hesse

I turn my back on him as he goes,
and settle myself in the parlor,
and touch Ma's piano.
My fingers leave sighs
in the dust. — Karen Hesse

By the summer I turned nine Daddy had given up about having a boy. He tried making me do. — Karen Hesse

Apples

Ma's apple blossoms
have turned to hard green balls.

To eat them now,
so tart,
would turn my mouth inside out,
would make my stomach groan.

But in just a couple months,
after the baby is born,
those apples will be ready
and we'll make pies
and sauce
and pudding
and dumplings
and cake
and cobbler
and have just plain apples to take to school
and slice with my pocket knife
and eat one juicy piece at a time
until my mouth is clean
and fresh
and my breath is nothing but apple.

June 1934 — Karen Hesse

I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans. — Karen Hesse

From the time I was ten, I thought of myself as 'good with words,' thanks to a perceptive and supportive fifth grade teacher. — Karen Hesse

Ivy Huxford kept peeking out and giving reports of who was there, and how she never saw so many seats filled in the Palace, and that she didn't think they could squeeze a rattlesnake into the back even if he paid full price, the place was so packed. — Karen Hesse