Bruce Coville Quotes

They packed him away for a few months last year, you know. Nutty as a fruitcake, though you wouldn't know it to look at him now. Not that he's normal, or anything. But he doesn't give you the idea that there are little bats flying around in his head anymore, if you know what I mean.

That sense of loss grew within the humans who had been left behind, left to live without unicorns. Even the ones who had never seen a unicorn, never heard of a unicorn, felt the passing of something sweet and wonderful. It was as if the air had surrendered a bit of its spice, the water a bit of its sparkle, the night a bit of its mystery.

But lies have a life of their own and are harder to kill than either men or unicorns.

Change will come, whether we wish it to or not. To fight it is like fighting the sunrise. Better to say, 'Ah, welcome old friend. Here you are again.

Stop running. That wouldn't be good enough. I had to stop being afraid.

I don’t want Tiamat to go back,” said Jeremy sullenly. “I want her to stay here with me.”

Miss Priest laughed. It was not a horrible laugh at all. “What a terrible idea!” she said. “Why do you want her to stay?”

Because I love her. I don’t want to lose her.”
Miss Priest reached out and took his chin in her hand. She looked into his eyes. “You silly boy,” she said. “Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people — they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.

There would not be much left if every useful thing that could be turned to bad ends were destroyed.

The music started, and we began to dance. It was like magic. A ghost can't lead, of course; he can't tell you where to go, with just a bit of pressure on your hand or your back. But I knew, anyway. I knew exactly where to turn, where to move. It was as if he was telling me with his eyes, which were locked on mine. And it was as if I was seeing another time through his eyes, because even though I was still in the Quackadoodle, at the same time I was back in Charleston, a hundred and twenty five years before.

In every separation lie the seeds of reunion, in every reunion the seeds of separation.

The shadow of the past is longer than any of us can imagine,’ said Alma Leonetti softly. 'You cannot unweave the tapestry of time, Moonheart. Take any event, great or small, and you can trace the threads of cause back across century after century, threads that are woven from the smallest of happenings. In the same way, things that we do today, any one of them, may have implications and consequences a thousand years from now that we cannot yet begin to imagine.

(T)he downfall of the wise and the mighty comes not from being strong or wise, but from thinking you are stronger and wiser than you truly are, than any being can truly be.

The Kid in the Plain Brown Wrapper If Jennifer Murdley hadn’t been forced to wear her brother’s underpants to school, the whole thing might never have happened. But when she walked into the laundry room on the morning of October 13th, she found her father pouring liquid detergent onto a load of clothes that included every pair of underwear she owned. “Dad!” she screamed. “Wait!” She was too late. The tub was filling, her underwear was soggy and soapy, and there was no chance of getting any of it dry before she had to leave for school. “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Murdley, holding up a stack of neatly folded underpants, “you can wear a pair of these!” “You have got to be kidding! Those belong to Skippy!” The conversation that followed wasn’t pretty. The bottom line had been that Jennifer was going to school, and she was going to wear underwear, even if it did belong to her brother.

There's lots of kinds of chains...You can't see most of them, the ones that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak...That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all.

(L)ittle is debated with greater ferocity than the question of what the creator owes the creation. Some feel you must hover over it, guarding it every moment. Others believe the highest, hardest, and most important task is to let go. They say that just as the parent must at some point release the child to the world, the creator must release the creation. Otherwise you stop it in its tracks, strangle its growth. Then you become not only its creator, but its executioner.