Beth Hughes > Beth's Quotes

“It does little good to make the trip and miss the journey!”
― Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm

“The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice. The same person who finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers might establish a persence online and then extend these relationships into the real world.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I don't know if my father can hear me. But it is important to pretend he can./ My sanity rests in that. The man he was can hear the daughter I am.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Transfer

“I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.”
― Rick Moody

“Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go​, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“If you don't read, I don't know how to communicate with you...I can never express who I am in my own words as powerfully as my books can.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“The purpose of school should not be to prepare students for more school. We should be seeking to have fully engaged students now.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“When we meet and I discover that we have read and loved the same books, we are instant friends.”
― Donalyn Miller

“I try to teach my students that books are a mirror, reflecting their own lives, and a window, giving them a peek into someone else's.”
― Donalyn Miller

“A classroom atmosphere that promotes reading does not come from the furniture and its placement as much as it comes from the teacher's expectation that students will read.”
― Donalyn Miller

“This is how I show my students that I love them - by putting books in their hands, by noticing what they are about, and finding books that tell them, "I know. I know. I know how it is. I know who you are, and even though we may never speak of it, read this book, and know that I understand you.”
― Donalyn Miller

“Failing to graduate a populace that values reading has long-term consequences for everyone.”
― Donalyn Miller, Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits

“Readers enjoy talking about books almost as much as they like reading.”
― Donalyn Miller, Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits

“If we value all readers, we must value all reading.”
― Donalyn Miller, Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus, he was real nice."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.”
― Robert Burns, Collected Poems of Robert Burns

“For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy