Lois Duncan > Quotes

“Sit down every day and DO IT. Writing is a self-taught craft; the more you work at it, the more skilled you become. And when you're not writing, READ.”
― Lois Duncan

“Life continues, and we all of us keep changing and building, toward what we cannot know.”
― Lois Duncan, Stranger with My Face

“We are the wise.
Do not envy us—
We who are too wise to draw near
the fire
Lest we get burned;
We who are too wise to love
Lest love should vanish and we be
hurt.
We are the wise.
Do not envy us our wisdom—
We who are too wise to live
Lest we should die.”
― Lois Duncan, Trapped: Cages of Mind and Body

“It's only by facing things that you ever put them behind you.
-Mrs. McConnell to Susan”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin

“Why are murder mysteries so popular? There's a 3-part "formula" (if you want to call it that) for a genre novel: (1) Someone the reader likes and relates to (2) overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles (3) to reach an important goal. The more important the goal, the stronger the novel. And the most important goal that any of us have is survival. That's why murder mysteries are more gripping than a story titled "Who Stole My TV Set.”
― Lois Duncan

“aloud she said why not you ray you were involed in this as much as the resst of uswhy is it that bud never tried to do anything to you ?his armed tighted around her.'he knew the worst thing for me was a world without you”
― Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer

“I feel now as though I’ve been sitting all my life inside a box, and suddenly someone is lifting the lid and I can look up and see the stars.”
― Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall

“The best things in life are simple. Simple things work. They don't foul up. It's the complicated things that get twisted around on you.”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin

“she thought ray i'll never see ray again there was a time she looked into those green eyes and said i love you so long ago he'll never know i still do”
― Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer

“She leaned over the bed to plant a goodbye kiss on his cheek. Instead he reached up and cupped her head in his left hand, so that he was in charge of her kiss and it landed oh his lips. It was not, as she would have expected, the fumbling kiss of a boy unused to dating but the practiced kiss of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.”
― Lois Duncan

“Today the average lifetime is over seventy years, long enough for a great number of accomplishments. But this development has occurred within the present century. Before that, people tended to die much younger than they do today, and among those early deaths were those of many brilliant and talented people who had much to give the world. It is those people to whom I reach out. It is to them I offer the opportunity to return.”
― Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall

“The silence was gone now, and the night was filled with voices—a chirp, a growl, a twitter—a burst of high-pitched laughter.”
― Lois Duncan, Daughters of Eve

“Many of the kids coming into my classes at the university are all but illiterate. You give them a page to read and they can't tell you what's on it. Try teaching them the classics, and they can't pronounce the words. Ask them to write about something, and they can't make complete sentences - much less spell anything over two syllables.”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin

“By the time they're in college, it's gone too far. They've had twelve years without disciplined learning and they don't know how to apply themselves. They haven't learned to study or to pace their work so that projects get completed on time. They fall asleep in lectures because they expect to be entertained not educated.”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin

“College guys are different. They’re looking for quality.”
― Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer

“Girls like her are a dime a dozen, and I happen to have a pocket full of dimes.”
― Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer

“It’s a time now of new beginnings.”
― Lois Duncan, Summer of Fear

“I am not Susan any longer, she thought. I am not the person they know as their daughter and their sister. I am a stranger who has lived through things they could not even imagine and who has changed into someone foreign to them all. They look at me and call me "Sue," and I speak back to them, and they never guess how far away from them I am and how much I miss them.”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin

“Lots of people see visions when they stare into shiny surfaces like crystals, or mirrors, or bodies of water,” Charlie explained. “Remember how the West Indian servant taught Betty Parris and her cousin how to break an egg into a glass of water to see visions of their future husbands? They were using the white of an egg in a clear container as a substitute for a crystal ball. When people stare into something intently like that, they’re more than likely to see images. For people with psychic ability, those images may sometimes reflect past or future events. There’s nothing supernatural about it, it’s just what happens.”
― Lois Duncan, Gallows Hill

“Karma isn’t a punishment, it’s a teaching aid. The idea behind reincarnation is that for most of us one lifetime isn’t enough to learn all the spiritual lessons we’re signed up for. Karma gives us a chance to retake the classes we flunk. If we mess things up in one lifetime, we’re allowed to come back and experience a similar situation—maybe from another angle—so we can learn the lessons we didn’t get the first time.”
― Lois Duncan, Gallows Hill

“High in the sky a thin, bleached moon peeped shyly out through a hole in the clouds, slimmer than it had been the night of Amy's party and guarded on either side by an entourage of stars”
― Lois Duncan, Don't Look Behind You

“On the rise above them the aluminum church glowed silver in the afternoon light.”
― Lois Duncan, Ransom

“She turned instead, and went into the house.”
― Lois Duncan, Debutante Hill

“Let’s go home.”
― Lois Duncan, They Never Came Home

“As a dominant trait.”
― Lois Duncan, The Third Eye

“It is good to take pride in our work... But we must not allow that pride to become master of our spirits.”
― Lois Duncan, The Magic of Spider Woman

“The world is too beautiful not to be shared.”
― Lois Duncan, The Magic of Spider Woman

“She wove the red of the mesas into her blankets. She wove in the white light of morning that shone from the East, and the golden glow of twilight that shone from the West. She wove in the blue of the happy skies of the South, and the black of the clouds from the North that brought rain to the desert.”
― Lois Duncan, The Magic of Spider Woman

“Anything worth doing is worth striving to perfect. If you are able to do it well, why should you do it halfway?”
― Lois Duncan, Killing Mr. Griffin