Caroline B. Cooney > Quotes

“I wonder why we always deny love. I remember in middle school, if you were accused of the crime of loving, you screamed denials constantly and stopped ever even looking at the boy you were accused of liking. The boys could destroy each other by yodeling, "An-drew lo-oves Jen-nie," and both Andrew and Jennie would flinch and blush. Love is this great thing that most songs and books and poems and lives are all about. So the minute we actually think there might be love around, we start laughing and pretending and hiding from it.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Girl Who Invented Romance

“When in doubt, shut up.”
― Caroline B. Cooney

“People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them. ”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Both Sides of Time

“She was a mind floating in an ocean of confusion.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“But I found my family.
I found the right thing to do.
I found the way home.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, What Janie Found

“But sometimes, in tight corners, when your back is against the wall and the world is against you, you have to fight back in unexpected ways.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Fatal Bargain

“She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“Stephen had just come from a class discussion in which several students believed that the right cup of herbal tea would save them from pain and sorrow. Well acquainted with pain and sorrow, Stephen did not contribute to the discussion. He merely crossed these idiots off his list of possible friends.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, What Janie Found

“Guys with nice person names try to be sympathetic.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Wanted!

“Breakfast was only worth having when somebody else made it for you.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Out of Time

“Lying on the front passenger seat, as if it didn't matter, was Rose's Diary.

It Mattered.”
― Caroline B. Cooney

“I'll take you to Mickey D's," said Sean. "I'll buy you a hamburger."
Annie was not thrilled. Sean's offer did not compare to offers made in other centuries.
"And fries," Sean said. "And a vanilla milkshake."
Annie remained unthrilled.
"Okay, okay. You can have a Big Mac."
Romance in my century, she thought, is pitiful.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Both Sides of Time

“I have no beliefs,” said her mother. “Only hopes.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“The only evil is that I don't mind that it happened.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“You have a girlfriend?" said Brian. "You never told us."
"I'm not going to tell you now either. Don't tell Mom and Dad, don't tell Jodie, don't tell Bren."
"Why not?" said Brian. "Mom and Dad would be thrilled. Unless she's some disgusting skank leading you down a sick and twisted path.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, What Janie Found

“She had never had a daydream that dreamed itself, like nightmares. That crawled out of her brain like a creature of the dark. A daymare.”
― Caroline B. Cooney

“If she dreamed, she did not remember when she awoke.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“It was like crawling on glass. No matter how firmly she resolved not to think such stupid things, she thought them.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“I guess you've grown up anyway, Janie. Even with all the bricks I put on your head to keep you little.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“Strat yearned to imagine her without even the thin white dress, but it would not be honorable, so he prevented himself from having such a fantasy.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Both Sides of Time

“They ended up at the Old Corner Bookstore, which Brian had read about in a tour guide to Boston. "Longfellow and Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes used to read here. Let's go in." Brian nudged the girls until they obeyed.

It was a regular bookstore, less history-minded than Brian had expected. In fact, the local history shelves were quite mangeable. I'll buy one book, he thought. This will get me launched in actual reading. Out of the zillions of choices, I'll find one here.

Brian picked out Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. It was thick and somehow exciting, with its chapter headings and scholarly notes and bibliography.”
― Caroline B. Cooney

“He felt blind and deaf, the way he did when he was close to a good idea but couldn't tap into it. He'd told Lizzie about that feeling once, and Lizzie had said, "That just means you aren't very smart, Reeve. Smart people have good ideas without having to be blind and deaf first.”
― Caroline Cooney, What Janie Found

“I have this terrible fear of fractions," Christina told him. ... "Miss Schuyler thinks she can conquer it. Also a fear of running out of popcorn. Nothing could be worse than going to a movie and they don't have any popcorn, you know?”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Fog

“It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions.

The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow.

It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself.

But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters.

Or were there?

The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they?

What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats?

She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside.

She knew something was out there.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Evil Returns

“Her parents kissed her on each side. Her mother took both her hands now and held them against her cheek, as if in prayer. “We tried everything to get Hannah out. We took her on long vacations, we sent her to live with my cousin in Atlanta, we tried traditional church. But she went to California to join the temple commune. There was nothing we could do. The law wasn’t on our side, Hannah wasn’t on our side. The cult even had armed bodyguards to keep parents like us from snatching our children back.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“What would she have? Coke, said Annie. And when she tasted the familiar drink, how much less scary the world was, and how much less frightening her task.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Out of Time

“She had a sense of herself being brain dead: running on tubes and machines.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, The Face on the Milk Carton

“Who was Florinda, and why did she faint so often that she needed a special couch on which to do it?”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Both Sides of Time

“But West, like the rest of the Trevors, was endlessly polite. It gave them protection; they could stand neatly behind their courtesy.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Freeze Tag

“She wanted love, adventure, and wild, fierce emotions that would batter her, as storms battered the island. I am thirteen, Christina thought, I am ready. I want it all.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Fog