Best 49 quotes of Beverly Cleary on MyQuotes

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt. [...] The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake

All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.

Children want to do what grownups do.

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

Don't stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don't forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.

He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.

I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.

If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.

I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.

I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!

In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.

I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.

I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.

Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents' Night.

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.

Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.

We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

Halfway to the house Stan stopped and turned to Jane. He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him. "I'm glad we're going steady," he whispered. "So am I." In spite of the reassuring weight of his bracelet on her wrist, Jane suddenly felt shy. It seemed strange to be so close to Stan, to feel his crisp clean shirt against her cheek. She could not look up at him. Gently Stan lifted her face to his. "You're my girl," he whispered. -Fifteen

I guess that’s what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn’t. But it is all right.

Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He had seen her once, and even though had been rumpled and grass-stained and having a terrible time with Sandra, he liked her well enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and calling to ask her to go to the movies. Jane smiled at the telephone and gave a sigh of happiness

She was surprised to feel his hand on her arm and still more surprised-almost unbelieving-to see his fingers unclasp his identification bracelet and remove it from his arm. Silently he fumbled with the bracelet and slipped it around her right wrist. with a tiny click he snapped the clasp shut. Jane gave a gasp of astonishment and turned questioning to Stan. She was wearing his identification bracelet! The silver links on her wrist were still warm from his arm

Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks, I want to play tiddlywinks," chanted Ramona, shaking her head back and forth.