Cleary Quotes & Sayings

Well, she thought, I'm certainly bright. She had wanted to meet a new boy and when she finally did meet one she didn't even find out his name — Beverly Cleary

Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England and because they are written with an economy of words as if they were written with a pen instead of a computer. Penelope Fitzgerald is a favorite. — Beverly Cleary

I know this is probably sort of sudden." The boy hesitated. "But I was wodnering if you would care to go to the movies with me tomorrow night. — Beverly Cleary

The officer asks me if I want to press charges against Trent and I glare at him like he's grown an arm out of his ass. — K.A. Tucker

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind. — Beverly Cleary

And if that's all he's looking for then we'll set fire to his balls."
"What?" Storm's face twists in a mixture of shock and amusement.
I shrug. "What can I say, Storm? I'm into some weird shit. — K.A. Tucker

It's not technically gossip if you start your sentence with "I'm really concerned about ," (fill in the name of the person you're not gossiping about). — Brian P. Cleary

According to Bela Szabados, it can be dangerous to ignore philosophers' personalities because philosophizing is a personal interpretation of truth. — Skye Cleary

If they had been riding in a car, she would have waited for him to go around and open the door for her, but riding in a truck is different — Beverly Cleary

Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He had seen her once, and even though had been rumpled and grass-stained and having a terrible time with Sandra, he liked her well enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and calling to ask her to go to the movies. Jane smiled at the telephone and gave a sigh of happiness — Beverly Cleary

A good friend will help you plant your tulips. A great friend will help you plant a gun on the unarmed intruder you just shot. — Brian P. Cleary

I think adults sometimes don't think about how children are feeling about the adult problems. — Beverly Cleary

I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed. — Beverly Cleary

And now I'm going to find out how to get a library started. — Beverly Cleary

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock. — Beverly Cleary

I don't ever go on the Internet. I don't even know how it works. — Beverly Cleary

If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book. — Beverly Cleary

In 50 years, the world has changed, especially for kids, but kids' needs haven't changed. They still need to feel safe, be close to their families, like their teachers, and have friends to play with. — Beverly Cleary

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible. — Beverly Cleary

I could lay here and stare at him forever. I don't want to let go. Ever. — K.A. Tucker

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school. — Beverly Cleary

And the muscles of his scrawny arms Are strong as rubber bands. — Beverly Cleary

I guess that's what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn't. But it is all right. — Beverly Cleary

In writing I found something I could do at least as well as my peers, if not better. — Brian P. Cleary

Sam Cleary reached the two old men fighting on the ground and used the fire extinguisher for the first time, bringing it down two-handed to hit Charlie Manx in the face. He would use it for the second time on Tom Priest, not thirty seconds later, by which time Tom was well dead.
Not to mention well done. — Joe Hill

Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language. — Beverly Cleary

He's not a bad guy, deep down," I said.
My dad slipped the key into the door. "Deep down, no one is. But you make choices. — Aaron Starmer

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there. — Beverly Cleary

I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year. — Beverly Cleary

I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives. — Beverly Cleary

most beautiful, magic time of the whole year. Her parents loved her, and she loved them, — Beverly Cleary

What the hell do I have to do to get your attention? Do I need to get up there?" I throw an arm toward the stage. His eyes swell for just a second, in shock. He reaches forward to hold my hands, but he catches himself in time and instead folds them across his chest. "Believe me, you have my full attention. — K.A. Tucker

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships! — Beverly Cleary

I am sort of medium ... I guess you could call me the mediumest boy in the class. -Leigh Botts — Beverly Cleary

She would not have hurt the old man's feelings for anything in the world. — Beverly Cleary

Emily was lucky in many ways. She was lucky in the house she lived in, a house with three balconies, a cupola, banisters just right for sliding down, and the second bathtub in Yamhill County. — Beverly Cleary

These are books that want to be read out loud. These are books kids share with each other, and I think that's important. — Brian P. Cleary

If she can't spell, she shouldn't be a librarian. — Beverly Cleary

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house. — Beverly Cleary

That was the trouble with this house. A girl couldn't even carry on a telephone conversation with any privacy — Beverly Cleary

Children want to do what grownups do. — Beverly Cleary

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all. — Beverly Cleary

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises. — Beverly Cleary

Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood. — Beverly Cleary

Ellen might have known her best friend would think of something like that. — Beverly Cleary

Words were so puzzling. Present should mean a present just as attack should mean to stick tacks in people. — Beverly Cleary

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it. — Beverly Cleary

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next. — Beverly Cleary

When a kid says "smell my hand," it almost never smells like cinnamon. — Brian P. Cleary

When flowing water ... meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it ...
Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger ... emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage. — Thomas Cleary

The rainy winter days passed quickly. Thanksgiving came and not long afterward Christmas vacation. Ramona missed Daisy, who went with her family to visit her grandparents. When she returned, the girls spent an afternoon dressing up Roberta in the clothes she had received for Christmas. Roberta was agreeable to having a dress pulled over her head, her arms stuffed into a sweater, her head shoved into caps. She enjoyed the girls' admiration. She was not so happy about a pair of crocheted slippers with ears and tails that looked like rabbits, a gift from Howie's grandmother, who enjoyed crocheting. Roberta did not care for the slippers. — Beverly Cleary

We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. — Beverly Cleary

Not only is love blind, it's a little hard of hearing. — Brian P. Cleary

All knowledge is valuable to a librarian. — Beverly Cleary

If you treat what you value most in life more like a garden and less like a vending machine, you'll probably be happier. (from You Oughta Know By Now) — Brian P. Cleary

Our cat is kind dove shellfish, and thinks the world is hers, She finds a comfy spot and then we pet turtle sheep purrs. — Brian P. Cleary

The existentialists' view of love is not romantic, because they do not believe in love as an abstract force or amorous sunset walks along the beach. However, Cox also said, "if your idea of romance is somewhat more gothic and stormy, full of heartache, yearning and the thwarted desire to possess breaking up, making up and breaking up again, tears before bedtime and tears in the rain, then maybe it is romantic". — Skye Cleary

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt ... The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake — Beverly Cleary

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books. — Beverly Cleary

Poor Miss Binney, dressed like Mother Goose, now had the responsibility of sixty-eight boys and girls. — Beverly Cleary

I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation. — Brian P. Cleary

I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus. — Beverly Cleary

They wiped his paws on a good bath towel whenever he came in with wet feet, because they had not been married long enough to have an old bath towel, — Beverly Cleary

We were weirdos, Fiona and I. Creative minds like ours were the minds of aliens. And the soul-suckers, the plagiarists, the malicious people like Charlie? They were sapping us. It was our mission to get away from them. — Aaron Starmer

I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college. — Beverly Cleary

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read. — Beverly Cleary

That's pretty bold of you, Jill Cleary." His eyes sparkled when he teased. "We've only known each other a few hours, and you're already talking about us getting pets together. — Carolyn Brown

I love the semicolon; it's unnecessary, but graceful and sophisticated. — Brian P. Cleary

When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener. — Jeff Kinney

She preferred to be numb. And mostly these days she was. She played dead, sleepwalking her way through her life on autopilot, hardly caring whether he hit her or kissed her - it was all the same in the end. — Cleary James

'Dear Mr. Henshaw' came about because two different boys from different parts of the country asked me to write a book about a boy whose parents were divorced, and so I wrote 'Dear Mr. Henshaw,' and it won the Newbery, and I was - it's been very popular. — Beverly Cleary

Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks, I want to play tiddlywinks, chanted Ramona, shaking her head back and forth. — Beverly Cleary

I do a lot of books on tape for Beverly Cleary, and another 'Smurfs' shout-out for that demographic. — Neil Patrick Harris

In seventh grade ... I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted. — Beverly Cleary

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona. — Beverly Cleary

I set the water to its hottest setting, wishing it was labeled, boil the hell out of any living organism. — K.A. Tucker

Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus' pestering little sister. — Beverly Cleary

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books. — Beverly Cleary

Ralph really felt sorry for the boy, hampered as he was by his youth and his mother. — Beverly Cleary

The Buddha is like space, with no inherent nature; appearing in the world to benefit the living, his features and refinements are like reflections. — Thomas Cleary

Do you want to be saved?" I asked.
Keri cocked an eyebrow. "Like Jesus?"
"Like Lancelot."
"I hang my hair out the window every night, waiting for some dude to climb up. — Aaron Starmer

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.

If only she had walked out there and then. — Cleary James

Because of barriers of knowledge, barriers of state, and barriers of action, seeing your own buddha nature is like seeing color at night. — Thomas Cleary

There's no such thing as free kittens. — Brian P. Cleary

What interests me is what children go through while growing up. — Beverly Cleary

If a couple has their picture taken at a wedding or other social gathering, and the woman looks hot, her guy could be blinking, chewing, or even mid-sneeze, and she'll still display it on her desk at work. — Brian P. Cleary

If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell. — Beverly Cleary

I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country, so we miss museums and the bustle of city life. — Beverly Cleary

leave. I learned I would be going to jail no matter what and that my confession had helped to ensure it would be for much longer than if I had followed my lawyer's simple instructions and said nothing. — Cleary Wolters

The excitable observer will pass judgement first and then make knowledge conform to judgement; the prudent observer will first learn to know and then judge according to knowledge. — Thomas Cleary

Bags and boxes across the hot parking lot to the van. On the way back to the mall, Willa Jean, who spotted the ice-cream store that sold fifty-two flavors, told her uncle she needed an ice-cream cone. Uncle Hobart agreed that ice-cream cones were needed by all. Inside the busy shop, customers had to take numbers and wait turns. Ramona, responsible for Willa Jean, who could not read, was faced with the embarrassing task of reading aloud the list of fifty-two flavors while all the customers listened. Strawberry, German chocolate, vanilla, ginger-peachy, red-white-and-blueberry, black walnut, Mississippi mud, green bubble gum, baseball nut. — Beverly Cleary

For me, it's been a treat to interact with authors who were publishing when I was a young reader. Judy Blume once gave me a pep talk at a writing conference. I had a short story featured in the same anthology as Beverly Cleary. Magic. — Cynthia Leitich Smith

Willa Jean, pleased to have her grandmother on her side, set a red checker on top of a black checker. "Your turn," she said to Ramona as if she were being generous. — Beverly Cleary

Uncle Avery, who was not only postmaster but mayor of Pitchfork as well. — Beverly Cleary

Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant. — Beverly Cleary

With gray thread Beezus carefully outlined the steam coming from the teakettle's spout and thought about her pretty young aunt, who was always so gay and so understanding. No wonder she was Mother's favorite sister. Beezus hoped to be exactly like Aunt Beatrice when she grew up. She wanted to be a fourth-grade teacher and drive a yellow convertible and live in an apartment house with an elevator and a buzzer that opened the front door. Because she was named after Aunt Beatrice, Beezus felt she might be like her in other ways, too. — Beverly Cleary

What were you thinking?"
"Not much, clearly."I hear the exasperation in Kacey's voice.
"I don't know about you, Livie ... Sometimes you're as graceful as a one-legged flamingo in a pit of quicksand. — K.A. Tucker

I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time. — Beverly Cleary

But the boys' bicycle pack also sent a stab of envy through me. If I couldn't yet capture John Cleary with my feminine wiles, then surely I deserved to enjoy the physical abandon he got, liberties I instinctively knew were vanishing. (I know, I know. Psychoanalytic theory would label this pecker envy and seek to smack me on the nose with it. To that I'd say, o please. Of actual johnsons I had little awareness. What I coveted was privilege.) — Mary Karr

Now that I've come to terms with the fact that the bastard is going to affect me whether I like it or not, he's even hotter than before. — K.A. Tucker