Richard Peck > Quotes

“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, Anonymously Yours

“Only the nonreader fears books. ”
― Richard Peck

“I read.. because one life is not enough”
― Richard Peck

“Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”
― Richard Peck, A Year Down Yonder

“We write by the light of every story we have ever read. ”
― 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

“[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

“The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.”
― Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago

“The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.”
― 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, A Long Way from Chicago

“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, A Year Down Yonder

“But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.”
― Richard Peck, Here Lies the Librarian

“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, Secrets at Sea

“Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.”
― Richard Peck

“If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one.”
― Richard Peck, A Year Down Yonder

“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, Invitations to the World: Teaching and Writing for the Young

“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

“I read because one life isn’t enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.”
― 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, A Year Down Yonder

“Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.”
― Richard Peck

“I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing.”
― Richard Peck, The River Between Us

“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, The Best Man

“Nobody but a reader becomes a writer.”
― Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago

“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

“...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 Season of Gifts

“I read because one life isn't enough. ”
― Richard Peck

“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, A Year Down Yonder

“She had eyes in the back of her heart.”
― Richard Peck, A Year Down Yonder

“Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'?”
― Richard Peck, A Season of Gifts

“I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.”
― Richard Peck