Sara Pennypacker > Quotes

“Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“The plain truth can be the hardest thing to see when it's about yourself. If you don't want to know the truth, you'll do anything to disguise it.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“I have noticed that teachers get exciting confused with boring a lot.”
― Sara Pennypacker, The Talented Clementine

“Sometimes the apple rolls very far from the tree.”
― Sara Pennypacker , Pax

“Oh, let me tell you, feelings are all dangerous. Love, hope... Ha! Hope! You talk about dangerous, eh? No, you can't avoid any of them. We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come out of anger at bad things; many unjust things are made just. But first we all have to figure out how to civilize it.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“no matter how bad things got, we could always make ourselves new again.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come of anger at bad things; many unjust things are made just. But first we all have to figure out how to civilize it.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“So which is it? You going back for your home or for your pet? They're the same thing, Peter said, the answer sudden and sure, although a surprise to him.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“It's a Buddhist concept. Nonduality. It's about oneness, about how things that seem to be separate are really connected to one another. There are no separations...This is not just a piece of wood. This is also the clouds that brought the rain that watered the tree, and the birds that nested in it and the squirrels that fed on its nuts. It is also the food my grandparents fed me that made me strong enough to cut the tree, and it's the steel in the axe I used. And it's how you know your fox, which allowed you to carve him yesterday. And it's the story you will tell your children when you give this to them. All these things are separate but also one, inseparable. Do you see?”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“you can acheive if you believe”
― Sara Pennypacker, The Talented Clementine

“You going back for your home or for your pet?” “They’re the same thing,”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Do you think anyone in the history of this world ever set out to fight for the wrong side?”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Oneness is always growing in the world, boy. Two but not two. It's always there, connecting its roots, humming. I can't be part of it--that's the price I pay for taking myself away. But you can be. You can vibrate with its heartbeat. You may be on your own. But you won't be alone.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“I have not had so good of a week. Well, monday was a pretty good day, if you don't count Hamburger Surprise at lunch and Margaret's mother coming to get her. Or the stuff that happened in the principal's office when I got sent there to explain that Margaret's hair was not my fault and besides she looks okay without it, but I couldn't because Principal Rice was gone, trying to calm down Margaret's mother. Someone should tell you not to answer the phone in the principal's office, if that's a rule. Okay, fine, Monday was not so good of a day.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Clementine

“I see a broken shell and I remind myself that something might have needed setting free. See, broken things always have a story, don't they?”
― Sara Pennypacker, Summer of the Gypsy Moths: An Empathetic and Humorous Middle-Grade Story of Foster Girls Becoming True Family

“but distrust is no match for kindness administered consistently and unmeasured, especially in creatures new to the world.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Thanks, Clementine. See what I mean? Sometimes you have to figure out the problem before you can figure out the solution.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Clementine's Letter

“Peter shifted his backpack and crutches. He took a step toward the bus. Then he turned back. "I'm family?"
"That's as true a thing as I've ever known. Now get on that bus.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“It always seemed like a snake to him, his anxiety. Waiting just out of sight, ready to slither up his spine, hissing its familiar taunt: “You aren’t where you should be. Something bad is going to happen because you aren’t where you should be.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“If you don’t want to know the truth, you’ll do anything to disguise it.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“It was a valuable thing, he suddenly realized, to have someone you could count on for honesty.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“You may be on your own. But you won't be alone.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“This war that is coming—are you sure it will harm all in its path? Even the youth? Everything. It will destroy everything. Pax”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“what if he was like his father, with that threatening kind of anger, the kind that was always simmering, the kind that could boil over at any time and hurt everyone in the way? The apologies afterward never healed the damage.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“It was an insane, impossible-to-keep promise, of course.

But he didn't care. Because when he'd made it, his heart--which, he suddenly understood, had been useless up until now, just killing time pumping his blood around--his heart had lifted right out of his chest, as if it had been reborn as a bird, and was now soaring somwhere near the top of the watchtower.

And the view from there was terrific.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Here in the Real World

“The new joy of speed, the urgency of coming night, the hope of reunion with his boy – these things transformed him into something that shot like liquid fire between the trees. Something gravity couldn't touched. Pax could have run forever.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Vola: So which is it? You going back for your home or for your pet?
Peter: They're the same thing.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Because you’re right. Bad stuff happens. But the real world is also all the things we do about the bad stuff. We’re the real world, too.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Here in the Real World

“Pax? That’s his name? It means ‘peace,’ you know.” Peter knew that—lots of people had told him.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Pax

“Everything was something else before and will be something else after.”
― Sara Pennypacker, Here in the Real World