Maud Hart Lovelace Quotes & Sayings

Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard — Maud Hart Lovelace

This was Betsy and Tacy's private corner. Betsy's mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy liked to read her stories aloud and she read them like an actress. She made her voice low and thrillingly deep. She made it shake with emotion. She laughed mockingly and sobbed wildly when the occasion required. — Maud Hart Lovelace

You don't grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults. — Maud Hart Lovelace

They soon stopped being ten years old. But whatever age they were seemed to be exactly the right age for having fun. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Carney was hatless and gloveless, wearing her pink linen. Sam looked at her more than once.
"its just because he likes pink," she told herself. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people's luck. — Maud Hart Lovelace

This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy.
"I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib.
It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so.
"Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too.
"He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing.
Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy did not answer. She was a talker, her family always said, but sometimes when she most wanted to talk she couldn't say a word. — Maud Hart Lovelace

We have to build our lives out of what materials we have. It's as though we were given a heap of blocks and told to build a house. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. "
"Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry."
"Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."
Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.
"But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics. — Maud Hart Lovelace

When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going to ask you to something or other. It's a strain. — Maud Hart Lovelace

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la. — Maud Hart Lovelace

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live? — Maud Hart Lovelace

That's the way you have to be with boys," said Betsy. "Beam about their old football when you're dying to know whether they're going to take you to a party. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing. — Maud Hart Lovelace

The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with. — Maud Hart Lovelace

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy dreamed about going away from Deep Valley, but she didn't for a moment suspect that around a bend in her Winding Hall of Fate a journey was actually waiting. — Maud Hart Lovelace

After Commencement Day, the world!" Joe said. "With Betsy. — Maud Hart Lovelace

New things are easier to do than old familiar things when there's going to be a change, Betsy decided profoundly. — Maud Hart Lovelace

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears. — Maud Hart Lovelace

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God. — Maud Hart Lovelace

We're growing up," Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.
"I'd like to be a fine one," Betsy thought quickly and urgently. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels. — Maud Hart Lovelace

They always ate and made tea on the alcohol lamp before going to bed. This was quite in the German tradition, Tilda said. Germans in their homes ate six meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, dinner, afternoon coffee, supper and in the evening tea or beer with sandwiches and kuchen. Betsy, in the cherry-red bathrobe, and Tilda in a blue one, feasted merrily. — Maud Hart Lovelace

It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Did he know that she was so dissatisfied with herself that she was always pretending to be different? Probably he did, and despised her for it. More than anyone she knew, Joe Willard was always, fearlessly, himself. — Maud Hart Lovelace

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat. — Maud Hart Lovelace

The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen ... — Maud Hart Lovelace

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be. — Maud Hart Lovelace

We're growing up and I don't like it, said Tacy, as they say at Heinz's later, drinking coffee. — Maud Hart Lovelace

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life ... and promise. — Maud Hart Lovelace

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside. — Maud Hart Lovelace

A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned. — Maud Hart Lovelace

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. — Maud Hart Lovelace

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say. — Maud Hart Lovelace

The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school. — Maud Hart Lovelace

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance. — Maud Hart Lovelace

I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy — Maud Hart Lovelace

I've got to stop thinking about myself so much
about how I look, how I'm impressing someone, whether I'm popular or not. I've got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Do you girls have hope chests?' Lloyd asked.
We certainly do.'
I don't,' said Betsy. 'My husband and I are going to use paper plates and napkins.'
Poor Joe!'
Lucky Larry! — Maud Hart Lovelace

The poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say - Mr. Ray, Heaven to Betsy — Maud Hart Lovelace

But perhaps people who liked to write aways made lists! Just for the fun of it. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Sam!" cried Carney. "I'm afraid I lost the flashlight, but ... "
That was all she said for Sam took her in his arms. Holding her tightly he kissed her muddy face, not once but several times. — Maud Hart Lovelace

She felt a little better about Leonard out here in the country. It was just being close to nature, she supposed. In the country you felt as you never could in town the return of spring after winter. You felt a sort of pulse in the earth which proved that nothing dies, that everything comes back in beauty. Leonard was coming back ... in some place beautiful enough to pay him for leaving the world. God knew all about his music, too. He would use that music someplace. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Muster your wits: stand in your own defense. — Maud Hart Lovelace

The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures. — Maud Hart Lovelace

And then we'll go to Tiffany's and get you a ring. And then
" he turned swiftly to look into her fade
" when can we get married? — Maud Hart Lovelace

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect. — Maud Hart Lovelace

After all, you couldn't go through life rolling your friendships into one gigantic snowball. You wanted different kinds of friendships, with different kinds of people. — Maud Hart Lovelace

I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger that capital 'W. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be? — Maud Hart Lovelace

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star — Maud Hart Lovelace