Top 15 Patricia Reilly Giff Quotes

But what gave him the most satisfaction was going back through the pages to read about his first story appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. That afternoon he'd bought Bird the largest bag of lemon drops he could find. "He gives her candy," she had said, remembering too.

Leave it to Annie. She knew everything.

How different everyone looked. How louldly they talked about who was starting work tomorrow, who would start in a week, while Sister Raymond sat at her desk looking serene. Bird felt a lurch in her chest. Of all of them, she though, she might be the one who'd miss school the most.

She wanted to put her head down on her knees and close her eyes. She felt the way she had years ago when she'd tumbled down the stairs and had the wind knocked out of her: a pain in the chest and stomach so strong it was hard to breathe.

He knew what she'd be reading first as she started from the beginning, reading what he'd had to say when he was younger, and then growing older, stories at first about tiny mice who lived in families in back of the wall, and stories about school, and apartments in Greenpoint and Carnasie and Flatbush, elves in Ireland that he'd pictured as Pop had told him about them, and the woman with lace on her sleeves. She kept turning pages, and then halfway through, she whispered, "Water Street." Thomas knew she was reading now about a boy who listened at a register, thinking about a family, and a lighthouse, and then she turned the next page and took a breath. It was the story he really wanted her to see: a story about a girl who though less of herself than everyone else did, who worried about everyone, even when she didn't want to, even when it made her irritable. A girl who was afraid, and who hardly knew it yet, but was on her way to being a healer like her mother, because there'd never be anything else for her, and how lucky they were just to know her.

What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you have to say?

She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The body was burning with fever. But alive. Alive!

The girl's mouth was chapped, tight and pinched, her skin dry. Mama would say she looked woebegone, but as Bird looked at her eyes, the word she thought of was desperate.

What had it been like the first time Da tried to read the same page? She could almost see his finger under each word, the whisper of his voice as he sounded out the words to himself. How had he ever done that? It seemed impossible.

He remembered everything. Maybe that was why he was such a great writer. What he remembered he'd put on paper, but it came out different, more interesting, more exciting than she'd ever been able to imagine.

Sometimes in life you have to do the hardest things to get somewhere—to change your life.

No one in the world like my sister Birdie.

He was laughing again. What was it about Bird that made him do that?

Outside it had begun to rain, a fine mist of a rain: fall leaves were plastered to the walkway, and puddles filled with bits of hay and coal lay in the street. A nice bit to remember for the writing. Water Street! He loved to look at it.

Writing wasn't easy for her. It wasn't like arithmetic, not like a column of numbers to be added or subtracted from the top of the blackboard to the bottom, neat and organized; or science, figuring out the why of things.