Patricia Reilly Giff Quotes

How could she know what she wanted to do with her life? All these years she thought she'd be a healer like Mama, and now she knew it was never going to happen.

She gives him candy. They're probably going to get married.

How many times had she seen Annie sew in a sleeve, easing both sides so that they wouldn't pucker, taking a stitch, and smoothing out the fabric again? And now Mama was doing the same thing to someone's head. Someone's skin.

How quiet everything was this Sunday afternoon, how still. No horse and wagon clopped down the street, no cart; no one stood on the corner talking. It was as if they were the only ones in the world.

Everything stopped: forks half raised, a bowl being passed. It seemed that the man was bathed in red, great swaths of it across his shirt and hands. And then Thomas realized: he was covered in blood.

I don't think he's touched a washcloth to his face since the day he was born.

Bird. A good name for her. She wasn't a sparrow or a songbird, though. She stood so straight, and her face was strong.

And the boy was right in back of her, his neck thin as a pencil. "My name is Thomas," he said. "Thomas Neary." She didn't answer. "The horse's name is Alfred, in case you want to know." He screwed up his face. "Or maybe Fernando."

Is there anyone noisier in the world than Bird Mallon?

"A new start," Pop said as they stopped at the corner and waited to cross over to where te horse and cart waited for them. "A new apartment, Thomas. A new life." A new world to write about.

But that was a realworld, and he didn't have to put it down on paper. He ripped the page out of the book, tore it into shreds, and threw them behind the tree, where they settled into the weeds.

Thomas watched him for a few minutes. Pop was good-looking, muscular, and his hair was almost gold even though it was getting a little thin on top. Thomas must have taken after his mother, whoever she was.

If only she could have held on to that day, held on to that moment forever, grasped it in her fists so it wouldn't escape. If only.

With just the sweep of a pen, Thomas, you can change the world, all of it.

He wrote stories about everything he saw, and he saw a lot. He walked through the streets of Brooklyn along the water, or leaned against the store windows on Livingston Street watching people hurrying along, making up stories about this one or that one.