“...that was Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things to Have a Funner LIfe and Make a Better Liar Out of Yourself Number 83...If a Adult Tells You Not to Worry, and You Weren't Worried Before, You Better Hurry Up and Start 'Cause You're Already Running Late.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“There comes a time when you're losing a fight that it just doesn't make sense to keep on fighting. It's not that you're being a quitter, it's just that you've got the sense to know when enough is enough.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It's a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that's you.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the page in little puffs when you're reading something or looking at some pictures, kind of hypnotizing smell.
I think it's the smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up real slow and easy until it starts piling on a person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all. Then their mouths open and their heads start bouncing up and down like they're bobbing in a big tub of of water for apples and before you know it... they're out cold and their face thunks smack-dab on the book.
That's the part that makes librarians the maddest. They get real upset if folks start drooling in the books”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“No sir, I don't know why, but my eyes don't cry no more.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“Six is a bad time too 'cause that's when some real scary things start to happen to your body, it's around then that your teeth start to coming a-loose in your mouth.
You wake up one morning and it seems like your tongue is the first one to notice that something strange is going on, 'cause as soon as you get up there it is pushing and rubbing up against one of your front teeth and I'll be doggoned if that tooth isn't the littlest bit wiggly.
At first you think it's kind of funny, but the tooth keeps getting looser and looser and one day, in the middle of pushing the tooth back and forth and squinching your eyes shut, you pull it clean out. It's the scariest thing you can think of 'cause you lose control of your tongue at the same time and no matter how hard you try to stop it, it won't leave the new hold in your mouth alone, it keeps digging around in the spot where that tooth used to be.
You tell some adult about what's happening but all they do is say it's normal. You can't be too sure, though, 'cause it shakes you up a whole lot more than grown folks think it does when perfectly good parts of your body commence to loosening up and falling of off you.
Unless you're as stupid as a lamppost you've got to wonder what's coming off next, your arm? Your leg? Your neck? Every morning when you wake up it seems a lot of your parts aren't stuck on as good as they used to be.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“Just like when there's a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there's a time when you know you've got to fight.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“having someone who likes you so much that they think everything you say is the truth has got to be a liar’s paradise”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“The big steel wheels creaked a couple times, then started moving.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“The next thing about the air in the library is that no other place smells anything like it. If you close your eyes and try to pick out what it is that you’re sniffing you’re only going to get confused, because all the smells have blended together and turned themselves into a different one. As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, the books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the pages in little puffs when you’re reading something or looking at some pictures, a kind of hypnotizing smell.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“The floor went completely black when Mr. Amos pulled the door shut. I couldn’t see it now, but I’d rememorized the exact shape the stain was in. The padlock snapped shut with the loudest click I’d ever heard.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“We were all standing in line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers came in and tap-tap-tap”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“station and said, “Yup, there’s the gasoline filling station.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“inside or the outside. I touched paper. I spread”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“If you didn't have a real good imagination you'd probably think those noises were the sounds of some kid blowing a horn for the first time, but I knew better than that. I could tell those were the squeaks and squawks of one door closing and another one opening.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“There comes a time when you're losing a fight and it just doesn't make sense to keep on fighting. It's not that you're bring a quitter, it's just that you've got the sense to know when enough is enough.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“God is great, God is good, Let us thank him For our food. Amen.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, quote from Bud, Not Buddy
“Children were the world as it was meant to be - and they were a light within the world. But for every light, there seemed to be someone bent on extinguishing it.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Silent Corner
“It was killing me to think that there was a right and a wrong thing to do. Right for Abelard was wrong for me, and wrong for Abelard was right for me. And nothing made sense except that love is sacrifice and pain.”
― Laura Creedle, quote from The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily
“When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
“One can press a man as far as one likes—but with a woman one must not press too far. For a woman has at heart a great desire to speak the truth. How many husbands who have deceived their wives go comfortably to their graves, carrying their secret with them! How many wives who have deceived their husbands wreck their lives by throwing the fact in those same husbands’ teeth! They have been pressed too far. In a reckless moment (which they will afterwards regret, bien entendu) they fling safety to the winds and turn at bay, proclaiming the truth with great momentary satisfaction to themselves.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from El asesinato de Roger Ackroyd
“A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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