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

“Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything.”
― Sherwood Anderson

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

“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