Natalie Babbitt Quotes & Sayings

I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life. — Natalie Babbitt

For, through the twilight sounds of crickets and sighing trees, a faint, surprising wisp of music came floating to them and all three turned toward it, toward the wood. — Natalie Babbitt

How old are you, anyway?' she asked, squinting at him.
There was a pause. At last he said, 'Why do you want to know?'
I just wondered,' said Winnie.
All right. I'm one hundred and four years old,' he told her solemnly.
No, I mean really,' she persisted.
Well then.' he said, 'if you must know, I'm seventeen.'
Seventeen?'
That's right.'
Oh,' said Winnie hopelessly. 'Seventeen. That's old.'
You have no idea,' he agreed with a nod. — Natalie Babbitt

I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread. — Natalie Babbitt

I was having that dream again, the good one where we're all in heaven and never heard of Treegap. — Natalie Babbitt

What is your suggestion for someone who wants to start writing? Be a reader. It's the only real way to learn how to tell a story. — Natalie Babbitt

That's what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. — Natalie Babbitt

Outside, the night seemed poised on tiptoe, waiting, waiting, holding its breath for the storm. — Natalie Babbitt

The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world. — Natalie Babbitt

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summer's day, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways. — Natalie Babbitt

And suddenly, she longed for a thunderstorm. — Natalie Babbitt

[B]elieving, was her own true, promising friend once more. — Natalie Babbitt

Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside. — Natalie Babbitt

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful - most of the time - of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't - not a bit of it - be true. And yet: — Natalie Babbitt

A fresh breeze lifted Winnie's hair, and from somewhere in the village behind them a dog barked. — Natalie Babbitt

I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw. — Natalie Babbitt

You really have to love words if you're going to be a writer, because as a writer, you certainly spend a lot of time with words. — Natalie Babbitt

The only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure. — Natalie Babbitt

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. — Natalie Babbitt

Dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life. — Natalie Babbitt

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple. — Natalie Babbitt

Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes. — Natalie Babbitt

You can't have living without dying. — Natalie Babbitt

Here, child, said Mae hastily Hide your eyes. Boys? Are you decent? What'd you put on to swim in? I got Winnie Foster in the house?
For goodness sake ma said Jesse emerging from the stairwell . You think were going to march around in our altogether with Winnie Foster in the house?
And Miles behind him sain we just jumped in with our clothes on too tired to shed them
It was true. They stood there side by side with their wet clothes plastered to their skins, little pools of water collecting at their feet. — Natalie Babbitt

Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is. — Natalie Babbitt

You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road. — Natalie Babbitt

You dont have to live forever just live. — Natalie Babbitt

I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact. — Natalie Babbitt

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too. — Natalie Babbitt

He wasn't crazy. How could he be? He was just
amazing. But she was struck dumb. All she could do was stare at him. — Natalie Babbitt

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams. — Natalie Babbitt

Right after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy. — Natalie Babbitt

Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes. — Natalie Babbitt

Life always seems to have worries, even if you own a big and beautiful house on the best street in town. — Natalie Babbitt

And Winnie, laughing at him, lost the last of her alarm. They were friends, her friends. She was running away after all, but she was not alone. Closing — Natalie Babbitt

I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being. — Natalie Babbitt

For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist. — Natalie Babbitt

The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox. — Natalie Babbitt

Miles said softly, "Ma. We'll get you out right away."
"Sure, Ma," said Jesse.
"Don't worry about me none," said Mae in the same exhausted voice. "I'll make out."
"Make out?" exclaimed the constable. "You people beat all. If this feller dies, you'll get the gallows, that's what you'll get, if that's what you mean by make out. — Natalie Babbitt

Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life — Natalie Babbitt

We human beings do a lot of dumb things, and war is certainly the dumbest. — Natalie Babbitt

(I)n reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely. — Natalie Babbitt

You've got nothing that lasts, you know. That's not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy? — Natalie Babbitt

The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give. — Natalie Babbitt

No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late. — Natalie Babbitt

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing? — Natalie Babbitt

Nonsense. It's elves! — Natalie Babbitt

Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had. — Natalie Babbitt

The first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for. — Natalie Babbitt

My mother always found me out. Always. She's been dead for thirty-five years, but I have this feeling that even now she's watching. — Natalie Babbitt

They've really begun the war," he said to himself. "And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies! — Natalie Babbitt

My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school! — Natalie Babbitt

I have always loved astronomy, and being an astronomer once lurked in the back of my mind. But I was never good at algebra. In fact, I flunked it twice in high school. — Natalie Babbitt

Well, thought Winnie, crossing her arms on the windowsill, she was different. Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once. — Natalie Babbitt

When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore. — Natalie Babbitt

That doesn't sound like civil war to me," said Gaylen, turning back to his book with a smile. "It only sounds silly."
"Of course it's silly," said the Prime Minister impatiently. "But a lot of serious things start silly. — Natalie Babbitt

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. — Natalie Babbitt

The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose. — Natalie Babbitt

I'm not exactly sure what I'd do,
you know
but something interesting -
something that's all mine
something that would make
some kind of difference in the world. — Natalie Babbitt

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College. — Natalie Babbitt

Midville's best street was High Street. It was up on a hill. Not much of a hill, to tell the truth, but in that part of the state, the flat south-central part, hills are not taken for granted. — Natalie Babbitt

The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old. — Natalie Babbitt

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths. — Natalie Babbitt

And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother's shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because - in spite of everything, she loved them. — Natalie Babbitt

And soon they were rolling on again, leaving Treegap behind, and as they went, the tinkling little melody of a music box drifted out behind them and was lost at last far down the road. — Natalie Babbitt

Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.
Tuck Everlasting — Natalie Babbitt

Wordy! I enjoy description - I like words, and words are the tools that writers use, just like paint is the tool that artists use. I think words are fun, and I have a lot of fun using them. I know that a lot of kids think my stories start very slowly, and I expect that's true. But that's the way I like to read stories, so when I'm writing them I can do what I want! I say that to kids in schools, and they are very generous - they say, That's true. You can do what you want. It's your story. — Natalie Babbitt

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live. — Natalie Babbitt

She discovered the wings she never knew she had. — Natalie Babbitt

But it's enough, just having this day. It's the knowing there's something different, something special up there waiting. It's the knowing you could choose to change your days
climb up there and throw yourself right down the throat of the only and last and greatest terrible secret in the world. Except you don't climb up. — Natalie Babbitt