Jeanne Birdsall · 262 pages
Rating: (36.6K votes)
“And I don't know if Batty's gotten over it yet,' said Skye.
Mr. Penderwick looked out the window to where Batty was playing vampires with Hound. Hound was on his back, trying to wiggle out of the black towel Batty had tied around his neck. Batty was leaping over Hound's water bowl, shrieking, 'Blood, blood!'
'She looks all right,' he said.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“People sometimes make unexpected choices when they're lonely”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Donit kill her now, just when we've gone to all that trouble to rescue her," said Jeffrey.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“The cuter the boy, the mushier your brain.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Am I odd?Is there something wrong with me,like Mrs.Tifton Said?"
Skye knelt down on the wet grass and looked straight into Batty's eyes. "No you stupid idiot,there's nothing wrong. with you.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Parents almost always want what's best for their children. They just don't always know what that is.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“This is what made a book great, she thought, that you could read it over and over and never get tired of it.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“It was all a cottage is supposed to be, small and snug, with a front porch, pink climbing roses, and lots of trees for shade.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“quidquid agas prudenter agas et respice finem...Skye was used to hearing this phrase, which Mr. Penderwick translated loosely as look before you leap and please don't do anything crazy.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“You have a rare and marvelous gift with words.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“It's not right to shoot someone because they're not intelligent.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“If there could be anything worse than having a parent die, it would be having a parent who never bothered to meet you.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Skye's always saying exactly the wrong thing to people-it wasn't just special for you.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“The moonlight had turned the gardens into a fairyland, magnificent and mysterious.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Her father had been forced to cancel her clarinet lessons after the neighbors complained about the practicing.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Maybe I can drown him in the lily pond.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“And depression settled over the kitchen like a wet fog.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“She didn't like being stuck indoors because of a bully.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Why does everybody think I argue? I never argue." Skye hesitated. "Or at least, I'm not going to argue as much anymore."
"That would be a miracle."
Skye chose to pretend she hadn't heard.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“I do have an important question, but I can ask it from out here. Are you dry?
Of course I'm dry. Why do you ask that?
So many daughters have come home wet lately.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“He was the least scary adult present, besides being English and therefore fascinating.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“She had to defend the people she loved the best.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“No, you stupid idiot, there's nothing wrong with you. You're perfect.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Will each of my daughters be delivered to me, one at a time, as from the briny deep?”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“A whole extra bed without a sister to go along with it!”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“Jane circled the mansion, passing door after door, all too la-di-da for comfort.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“It seemed that the closer the girls got to Mrs. Tifton, the louder Skye squished, like a monster jellyfish with feet.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
“All was at peace while Batty picked flowers and hummed a song about kangaroos.”
― Jeanne Birdsall, quote from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
Jeanne Birdsall
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“[From Old Mortality]
The woman in the picture. . . was only a ghost in a frame, and a sad, pretty story from old times.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, quote from The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
“Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the failures and the empty triumphs.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from City
“When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs' - DELLA VAGINA DELLA MEMBRE SUE, to use one of Dante's most terrible Tacitean phrases - he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the Greeks were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred resolutions of Chopin's music. It is in the discontent that haunts Burne- Jones's women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the 'famous final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him, though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for THYRSIS or to sing of the SCHOLAR GIPSY, it is the reed that he has to take for the rendering of his strain. But whether or not the Phrygian Faun was silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in the wind. Between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf, but between art and myself there is none. I hope at least that there is none.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from De Profundis and Other Writings
“Men haven't changed: they love the thrill of the chase, and if you hand yourself over on a plate they'll lose interest.”
― Jane Green, quote from Mr. Maybe
“I don't think he could ever be a serial killer. He's way too shy. That Ted Bundy guy, he was pretty outgoing , from what I heard.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from When Lightning Strikes
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