Marie

“I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. '…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.' So should a child’s. For myself, I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children.

(from the author's acceptance speech for the Caldecott award)”
― Barbara Cooney, Chanticleer and the Fox

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? (...) We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors

“If you are embarrassed about your sex, it must mean that you feel there is something demeaning or disgusting about being female. You are all wondrously made, girls. Remember that: wondrously made, and you should carry your sex proudly, a badge of honor.”
― Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, All But Alice

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”
― Jack London