Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.
Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple.
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.
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.
I was having that dream again, the good one where we’re all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.
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. It’d be nice to have a new name, to start with, one that’s not all worn out from being called so much.
Life always seems to have worries, even if you own a big and beautiful house on the best street in town.
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.
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.
Life’s got to be lived, no matter how long or short.
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.
Readers are lucky – they will never be bored or lonely.
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.
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.
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.