Best 56 quotes of E. L. Konigsburg on MyQuotes

A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry.

Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret us no fun. And although you dont want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.

Because way down deep they know that civilized people have to preserve rare birds.

Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That's the hardest thing to find.

But happiness is not always loud and bright and crowded. Happiness ripens like a watermelon, sweet and rosy on the inside with only a thin top layer altogether free of small black pits. And, like a watermelon, the whole thing can be covered with a plain dark rind.

By the time they get to 6th grade honor roll students won't risk making a mistake, and sometimes to be successful, you have to risk making mistakes.

Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.

Every job in the world has some built-in boredom. No man can stay excited about something every minute he is doing it. Routine is as necessary to life as water is to beer; it is the base that holds the flavors and spices together.

Five minutes of planning are worth fifteen minutes of just looking.

Going to school- picking an apple Getting an education- eating it

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.

How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence.

I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.

I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.

I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.

Indecisiveness wears a person out.

It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.

It often takes more courage to be a passenger than a driver.

I've been the oldest child since before you were born

I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.

Jamie, you know, you could go clear around the world and still come home wondering if the tuna fish sandwiches at Chock Full O'Nuts still cost thirty-five cents.

...just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.

Kids want acceptance from their peers, but in two different, opposing ways: They want to be like everyone else and they want to be different from everyone else. So the question is: How do you reconcile these opposing longings?

Lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.

Nathan, how can you stand playing the same piece over and over again?" And Grandpa Nate answered, "Why don't you ask me how I can stand making love to the same woman over and over again?

Never have a long conversation with anyone who says "between you and I.

Ninety percent of who you are is invisible." - Mrs. Zender

Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.

Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts.

Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space -- it makes connections.

Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts?

Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.

The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.

There's something nice and safe about having money.

They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.

True simplicity is elegant.

Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides.

When I visit schools and talk to students about writing, I give them one word of advice and I give it to them quickly and loudly-FINISH! Starting something is easier than finishing it. You must have discipline to go from a few sentences, to a few paragraphs, to a piece of writing that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Finishing something bridges the difference between someone who has talent and one who does not. My best advice? Apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair-and finish. FINISH!

When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else.

Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years--about twelve of them--to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood.

But lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.

Flattery is as important a machine as the lever, isn't it, Saxonberg? Give it a proper place to rest, and it can move the world.

For the novelist or poet, for the scientist or artist, the question is not where do ideas come from, the question is how they come. The how is the mystery. The how is fragile.

Good explanations are like bathing suits, darling; they are meant to reveal everything by covering only what is necessary.

Had she been born 500 years sooner, Raphael would have chosen her as a model for his cherubs. Tendrils of bright red hair framed her face, a spray of freckles powdered her nose, and she was as plump as a perfectly ripened peach. Raphael probably would have painted out the freckles, and that would have been a mistake. Like brushing cinnamon off cinnamon toast.

He also learned to regard each port of call as part of the journey and not as destination. Every voyage begins when you do.

...I didn't run away to come home the same. -Claudia

In some way, every creative action disturbs the universe.

I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.

It takes more courage to disturb the neighborhood than it takes to disturb the universe. And the price is often higher.