Richard Peck Quotes & Sayings

At last she said, Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They're like a pack of hound dogs. They'll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke. — Richard Peck

We write by the light of every book we've read. — Richard Peck

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you. — Richard Peck

Only the nonreader fears books. — Richard Peck

I read.. because one life is not enough — Richard Peck

Nobody but a reader becomes a writer. — Richard Peck

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school. — Richard Peck

Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother. — Richard Peck

Hayseeds we might be, but we meant to be informed hayseeds. — Richard Peck

This was something Grandma Tilly couldn't understand
how war promises a boy it can make a man out of him. — Richard Peck

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city. — Richard Peck

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized. — Richard Peck

I read because one life isn't enough. — Richard Peck

And don't look for anything out of the law around here," she said. "The Cowgills and the Leapers is kin to the sheriff. No justice in these parts. It's every man for hisself."
"But as the saying goes, if you can't get justice," Mrs. Dowdel remarked, "get even. — Richard Peck

Aunt Agnes said, "It's hard to make a good Christian out of a cat. — Richard Peck

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived. — Richard Peck

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself. — Richard Peck

Never worry about a book corrupting a child. Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books. — Richard Peck

They'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they? ... Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks. — Richard Peck

A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed. — Richard Peck

I seen but little of this world,
Except my corner of it;
The city never drew me,
For I knew I could not love it.
What I loved best was watching
The garden getting ripe
And a pouch of sweet tobacco
And my old cob pipe.
What I loved best was a harvest moon
Before a frosty morn
And lamplight in the barn lot
And them long, straight rows of corn.
I was plain and country;
That's where it starts and ends,
But nobody loved her family more,
Or treasured more her friends.
I loved the changing seasons,
And looking for life's reasons,
And honey in the comb,
and home. — Richard Peck

A solider must leave someone behind,' she said. 'What men do best is walk away from women. Wars are handy for that. — Richard Peck

Martin Wilson's What They Always Tell Us hears the voices of the young as they struggle toward adulthood ... — Richard Peck

Besdies, to turn me ladylike might have rendered me useless and possibly ornamental. — Richard Peck

We thought he was weird. He thought we were weird. It was great. It was what multiculturalism ought to be" -Archer — Richard Peck

Conformity is the enemy of friendship — Richard Peck

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready. — Richard Peck

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, Hey, don't quit. — Richard Peck

September 11
We thought we'd outdistanced history
Told our children it was nowhere near;
Even when history struck Columbine,
It didn't happen here.
We took down the maps in the classroom,
And when they were safely furled,
We told the young what they wanted to hear,
That they were immune from a menacing world.
But history isn't a folded-up map,
Or an unread textbook tome;
Now we know history's a fireman's child
Waiting at home alone. — Richard Peck

I don't think grandma's a very good influence on us. — Richard Peck

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep. — Richard Peck

Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats. — Richard Peck

When I read a good book, it's like traveling the world without ever leaving my chair. — Richard Peck

Grandma, how old is she?"
"Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck. — Richard Peck

And I'll tell you something else for free. If you set a foot over that doorsill, I'll wring your red neck. — Richard Peck

Stay away from people who don't know who they are but want you to be just like them. People who'll want to label you. People who'll try to write their fears on your face. — Richard Peck

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart. — Richard Peck

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple. — Richard Peck

We'd gotten him wrong. He wasn't a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he'd seen us all a good deal clearer than we'd ever seen him. — Richard Peck

Why she hankered to be a teacher, I couldn't tell you. But she had chalk dust in her veins, and she deserved to get that certificate. It was only fair. — Richard Peck

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer. — Richard Peck

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move. — Richard Peck

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places. — Richard Peck

The sobs came then, faster than she could swallow. A teacher dares not cry, not a real teacher. — Richard Peck

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world. — Richard Peck

She had eyes in the back of her heart. — Richard Peck

But later when I was a teacher, an English teacher naturally, my students preferred fiction to reality. They were in junior high, and so they preferred ANYTHING to reality. — Richard Peck

Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie. — Richard Peck

But it was a rich, picture-perfect, it-can't-happen-here kind of suburb where people had gone, not to deal with life's problems, but to avoid them. — Richard Peck

The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.'
Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy's son could have been my dad. — Richard Peck

If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one. — Richard Peck

As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began. — Richard Peck

So there is some justice in this world, though not a lot. — Richard Peck

I'm so far gone that I'm telling the truth. It sounds like a foreign language. — Richard Peck

Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'? — Richard Peck

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing. — Richard Peck

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about. — Richard Peck

She said that time was like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. She meant you could never go back. But of course we had. She'd taken me back. — Richard Peck

We write by the light of every story we have ever read. — Richard Peck