“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
See more on GoodReads
“Trust = telling someone about the things that make you sleepless. Or trying to, at least. Wanting to.”
― Hillary Frank, quote from I Can't Tell You
“hiring a home health aide, who wound up spending nearly as much time and energy helping Joe as she did Laura.”
― quote from Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying
“My earliest memories are of CP4 — that's a Kähler manifold that looks locally like a vector space with four complex directions, though the global topology's quite different. But I didn't really grow up there; I was moved around a lot when I was young, to keep my perceptions flexible. I only used to spend time in anything remotely like this" — he motioned at the surrounding more-or-less-Euclidean space — for certain special kinds of physics problems. And even most Newtonian mechanics is easier to grasp in a symplectic manifold; having a separate visible coordinate for the position and momentum of every degree of freedom makes things much clearer than when you cram everything together in a single three-dimensional space.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder
“Golden arrow? And what would we do with a golden arrow? Give it to Alan for a lute string? I could hang it around my neck on a chain, perhaps, and let it stab me in the ribs when I tried to sit.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from The Outlaws of Sherwood
“People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour’s work as for a day’s. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and when the bridegroom finally arrives at midnight with vine leaves in his hair, they turn up with their lamps to light him on his way all right only they have forgotten the oil to light them with and stand there with their big, bare, virginal feet glimmering faintly in the dark.”
― Frederick Buechner, quote from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Black Hole
The Summer of Katya
First Meetings in En...
Last Words
The Great Fires
When You Were MineBookQuoters 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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
