Cynthia Voigt > Quotes

“She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.”
― Cynthia Voigt, When She Hollers

“Rebellion is necessary for development of character.”
― Cynthia Voight

“She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.”
― Cynthia Voigt, When She Hollers

“But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess"—Gram laughed a little—"I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them.”
― Cynthia Voigt

“I got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song

“I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not anymore.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song

“You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, where love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn't matter much measured up against the love.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Come a Stranger

“Why doesn't momma come back?”
― Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming

“The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she
had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances.
For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter
what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way.
And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself.
Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again.
And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song

“It's never been today before.”
― Cynthia Voigt

“People can be unimaginably foolish...and they can be unimaginably grand, at times.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“People had no more choice than animals about the burdens they carried.”
― Cynthia Voigt, On Fortune's Wheel

“Hiding under the bed doesn't make the worry stop.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Young Fredle

“ I felt that the world itself had changed and that it would never be steady under my feet again. I felt I understood nothing of people and had no way to learn. I felt fear.
Until you have felt fear, you cannot imagine it. Once you have really felt it, you know that all your earlier nervousness was but a pale shadow.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“...a really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Orfe

“Dicey looked out over the tall marsh grasses, blowing in the wind. If the wind blew, the grasses had to bend with it.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song

“...all work is worth doing well. And there are things to be enjoyed about most jobs...”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Book of Lost Things

“Behind the mask Jackaroo wore, there could be a face of bone, its flesh long since eaten away. Jackaroo could fight as a trained soldier, with swords and shield; he could ride a horse like a Lord; and he had the knowledge of letters which only the Lords held.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Jackaroo

“Even after everyone had gone home, the house was filled with the good time they’d had, as if it could linger in the air like the voices and music lingered in memory. Mina wrapped the memory up and put it in her heart; there was a quiet gladness, deep like a tree and tall in her”
― Cynthia Voigt, Come a Stranger

“Where the veil broke, you could see silvery clouds on which tall angels might stand. Not cute little Christmas angels, but high, stern angels in white robes, whose faces were sad and serious from being near God all day and hearing His decisions about the world.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming

“You should have spoken up sooner." her grandmother answered. "No need to bear pain unless you have to.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming

“Men, and women too, are unpredictable creatures. You have seen little of this. I wonder now if your innocence is enough protection for you.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“Once again, everything had changed on them. Perhaps it was all this changing that made her sad.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming

“When a daring idea first crosses one's mind, if it is to be realized in the future it is often appealing. Then, as the time for its execution comes nearer, one begins to dread that which had once been anticipated. ”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, wheere love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn't matter much measured up against the love.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Come a Stranger

“He felt — washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a place where he could be himself, without hiding anything, without pretending even to himself. He felt, thinking his way back up the beach, as if his brain had just woken up from some long sleep, and it wanted to run along beside the waves, to see how far and fast it could go.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“He knew from the first that this man would know how to hurt him.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Wings of a Falcon

“Oriel didn’t move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more rapid than he could follow. Griff, he knew, would do and say nothing until he heard Oriel’s choice.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Wings of a Falcon

“Throughout the meal, Windy’s voice blew over them, smooth and steady. It didn’t matter what he was saying.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming