“Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I miss school.
What’s wrong with me?”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“You told us over and over that you don’t think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you’d probably die before you’d think to rip pages out of one to start a fire. Am I right?
Well, get over it already. Better to be warm then well-read.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I operate under the assumption that people don't notice the good in me. That's just how things always seem to play out. I get blamed, while con-artist kids like Venus, and Camille, and Gemma get believed. But the rescue lady noticed. In the background, just observing, she noticed.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“(Actually now I’m remembering that the goodbye chow isn’t spelled that way. It’s ciao or something weird like that. It’s Italian, right? But I’m not an Italian gypsy, I’m a hungry gypsy. So spelling it chow makes total sense.)”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I don’t think you’re aloud to be homeschooled if you don’t have a home.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Okay that’s it. Now I’m torching this.
I just need to score a match.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Blue Face
Disgusting taste
Flush it
Shush it
Cold disgrace”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your ants, but why did you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Street people use cardboard all the time, and bum alleys are just shanties or lean-tos, though. They’re nothing like my house! Mine is deluxe! It’s a big, thick, super sturdy refrigerator box that I found at an appliance store!”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“It’s funny to hear priests and nuns argue with each other.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“She was married to my dad, and everything was fine until he got killed in some freak tractor accident.
Yeah, that’s what I said, a freak tractor accident.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Thank you for helping me turn the page.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Food in the trash is like the tossed-and-found.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I’m not going to be able to sleep a wink tonight.
I hate shelters.
People coughing and snoring and hacking up who-knows-what.
It’s a nightmare.
But I do have clean teeth.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Summers there are awful! Winters there are awful! Why do you stay? You ought to run away! Hop a train! Stow away on a bus!
What am I saying? You could just buy yourself a ticket.
It would be interesting to talk to you if you did it the other way, though.
We could compare scars and bruises.
It might be fun.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“Words can't fix my life.
Words can't give me a family.
Words can't do jack.
You may be a teacher, Ms. Leone, but face it: You don't know squat.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“scraps of love
torn and tattered
faded, scattered
trashed
threads of hope
frayed and tangled
broken, mangled
dashed
backing, buttons
yarn and batting
quilted tenderly
wrapped up in
this warm repair
my patchwork family”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I've decided this is all your fault, Ms. Leone. I've run away before, you know, but stowed away or jumped trains or broke into buildings, I just ran away and got caught. But I think all that stuff you told us about the Underground Railroad got lodged in my subconscious, and somewhere inside it gave me the strength or courage or insanity to really get away. So see? This is all your fault.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
“I’d way rather defend myself against a man with a stick than a social worker with good intentions.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, quote from Runaway
Wendelin Van Draanen
Born place: Chicago, Illinois, The United States
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“All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true.”
― Ravi Zacharias, quote from Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
“The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Blue Octavo Notebooks
“It happens that over a long period you are promised a great success, in which from the very start you do not believe, so dissimilar is it from the rest of fate's offering, and if from time to time you do think of it, then you do so as it were to indulge your fantasy - but when, at last, on a very ordinary day with a west wind blowing, the news comes - simply, instantaneously and decisevely destroying any hope in it - then you are suddenly amazed to find that although you did not believe in it, you had been living with it all this time, not realizingt he constant, close presence of the dream, which had long since grown fat and independent, so that now you cannot get it out of your life without making a hole in that life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Gift
“I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“The urge to move is natural and understandable. As will be the case throughout your life, no matter how long or brief, the choice is, in the end, yours. Simply bear in mind that most every choice will have consequences, and in this instance those consequences would likely be quite grave.”
― Ron Currie Jr., quote from Everything Matters!
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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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