Barbara Robinson > Quotes

“I've got the baby here," Imogene barked at the Wise Men. "Don touch him! I named him Jesus.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“But as far as I'm concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman--sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever [Script Adaptation]

“I happened to look at Imogene and I almost dropped by hymn book on a baby angel.
Everyone had been waiting all this time for the Herdmans to do something absolutely unexpected. And sure enough, that was what happened.
Imogene Herdman was crying.
In the candlelight her face was all shiny with tears and she didn't even bother to wipe them away. She just sat there-awful old Imogene-in her crookedy veil, crying and crying and crying.
Well. It was the best Christmas pageant we ever had.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“When they got to the part about swaddling clothes and the manger, Imogene asked, “You mean they tied him up and put him in a feedbox? Where was the Child Welfare?”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever [Script Adaptation]

“The Herdmans moved from grade to grade through the Woodrow Wilson School like those South American fish that strip your bones clean in three minutes flat . . . which was just about what they did to one teacher after another.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“cigars”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“Alice”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“So was that it, Beth?” Charlie asked me. “The mice and the guinea pigs? Was that, like, the last straw, and then everybody said, ‘All right, that’s it, the last straw … no Halloween’? Was that it?” “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it was everything else.” There had been a lot of everything else because Labor Day was late, so school started late. Parents had an extra week to buy their kids school shoes and get their hair cut; kids had an extra week to finish the fort or tree house or bike trail or whatever else they’d been building since June; and teachers had an extra week to pray they wouldn’t have any Herdmans, I guess… . And of course the Herdmans had an extra week, too, to tear up whatever they’d missed during the summer. That turned out to be a lot and, as usual with the Herdmans, it wasn’t always things you would expect them to do. The police guard at the bank said that he had seen them come in. “Can’t miss them!” he said. “So I went right over and stood by the big fish tank. I figure, if I see a bank robber coming I’ll defend the money, but if I see those kids coming I’ll defend the fish.” He shook”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Halloween Ever

“of cars and great big”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best School Year Ever

“Mrs. Wendleken says all they do is talk about sex and underwear.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“The”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“Herdman”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“janitor,”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best School Year Ever

“hear all about the nice warm stable with all the animals breathing, and the sweet-smelling hay—but that doesn’t change the fact that they put Mary in a barn.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“And every time you go in the girls’ room,” she went on, “the whole air is blue, and Imogene Herdman is sitting there in the Mary costume, smoking cigars!” Alice wrote all these things down, and how many times each thing happened. I don’t know why, unless it made her feel good to see, in black and white, just how awful they were. Since none of the Herdmans had ever gone to church or Sunday school or read the Bible or anything, they didn’t know how things were supposed to be.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“And this was the funny thing about it all. For years”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

“costumes.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Halloween Ever

“Chia”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best Halloween Ever

“roof.”
― Barbara Robinson, The Best School Year Ever