Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Gail Carson Levine - Page 2

But what I really long to know you do not tell either: what you feel, although I've given you hints by the score of my regard. You like me. You wouldn't waste time or paper on a being you didn't like. But I think I've loved you since we met at your mother's funeral. I want to be with you forever and beyond, but you write that you are too young to marry or too old or too short or too hungry - until I crumple your letters up in despair, only to smooth them out again for a twelfth reading, hunting for hidden meanings.

You see, writing down your meanderings gets something started deep in the recesses of your brain. That distant part of your mind knows that you want to write stories or poems or plays and not endless jabber, and it will get to work. It may take a while. You may have to write this stuff for hours or days or weeks, but eventually that subterranean part of your brain will come through and begin to send you ideas.

It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing.

Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.

I loved fairy tales as a kid. I've always been drawn to fantasy. They're always exciting. There's never a dull moment. I just love the embellishments and the magical stuff. It's such fun to work with and to re-imagine your own way.

Kisses were better than potions.

Would you favor me with a dance?" Over all the others I was his choice! I curtsied, and he took my hand. Our hands knew each other. Char looked at me, startled. "Have we met before, Lady?

To me, merely and pretty were words that had nothing to do with each other. Pretty went with miraculously, and merely belonged in another paragraph entirely.

I wrote as a kid, but I never wanted to be a writer particularly. I had been drawing and painting for years and loved that. And I meditate, and one time when I was meditating, I started thinking, "Gee Gail, you love stories -- you read all the time. How come you never tell yourself a story?" While I should have been saying my mantra to myself, I started telling myself a story. It turned out to be an art appreciation book for kids with reproductions of famous artworks and pencil drawings that I did. I tried to get it published and was rejected wholesale.

Perhaps we can come here together someday. By the way, you're a month older than the last time I saw you. Are you still too young to marry.

I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

I don't wait for inspiration. Writing is my job.

I was no hero. The dearest wishes of my heart were for safety and tranquility. The world was a perilous place, wrong for the likes of me.

I had always been the hardest on myself when I drew and painted. I am not hard on myself when I write. I like what I write, so it is a much happier process.

If beginnings terrify you, or if you just plain don't like writing them, or if they bore you, skip 'em.

When I was little I knew my father had been an orphan and had lived in an orphanage. I was curious, but my father wouldn't satisfy my curiosity. He told only one story about the orphanage, and that was of sneaking out and buying candy, which he sold to other orphans. He said he had a pretty good business going - till he was busted! I guess he told that anecdote because he was the hero of it and I suspect he was rarely the hero as a child, more often the victim. There's a photo of the actual orphanage on my website, and you can see it's a forbidding looking place.

I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which were rejected by every children's book publisher in America. The first book of mine to be accepted for publication was ELLA ENCHANTED, and not one but two publishers wanted it. That day, April 17, 1996, was one of the happiest in my life.

The fast fliers are not disgraced." Queen Ree reached up for the missing tiara. "She saved us, but she's with him now." Vidia was complicated, two fairies in one, a loyal traitor.

My favorite of my books is DAVE AT NIGHT, because it's loosely based on my father's childhood in an orphanage.

Crying is part of the adventure.

I had to share a room with my sister, who is five and a half years older than I am. We didn't get along well, and I felt that I had no privacy. So books were my privacy, because no one could join me in a book, no one could comment on the action or make fun of it. I used to spend hours reading in the bathroom -- and we only had one bathroom in our small apartment!

Oak, granite, Lilies by the road, Remember me? I remember you. Clouds brushing Clover hills, Remember me? Sister, child, Grown tall, Remember me? I remember you.

The Writer's Oath I promise solemnly: 1. to write as often and as much as I can, 2. to respect my writing self, and 3. to nurture the writing of others. I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.

Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy...it takes a mean author to write a good story.

No one is here," Char said. "You need resist temptation no longer." "Only if you slide too." "I'll go first so I can catch you at the bottom." He flew down so incautiously that I suspected him of years of practice in his own castle. It was my turn. The ride was a dream, longer and steeper than the rail at home. The hall rose to meet me, and Char was there. He caught me and spun me around.

that the book is really good. and theres a prince in it to.

He bowed. 'The young lady must not dance alone.

But my last conscious thought was an image of Prince Char when he'd caught the bridle of Sir Stephan's horse. His face had been close to mine. Two curls had spilled onto his forehead. A few freckles dusted his nose, and his eyes said he was sorry for me to go.

I rode all day. I cried all night. The moon didn’t glow. The sun didn’t rise. A comet blazed Between my eyes. West and South, Wind and rain. Every way is Just the same. Pray give me a box To hide inside. Pray give me a spade To dig my own grave.

Father asks frequently in his letters whether I fancy any Ayorthaian young lady or any in our acquaintance at home. I say no I suppose I'm confessing another fault: pride. I don't want him to know that I love if my affections are not returned

He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering--all at once.

Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander. Father.

No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden. My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.

Voices and faces aren't manifestations of good or bad.

Although we didn't invite Lucinda, she arrived anyway-with a gift. "No need," Char and I chimed together. "Remember when you were a squirrel," Mandy said.

To pretend I was sliding down the stair rail." He laughed again. " You should have done it. I would have caught you at the bottom.

I know all about you," Char announced after we'd taken a few more steps. "You do? How could you?" "Your cook and our cook meet at the market. She talks about you." He looked sideways at me. "Do you know much about me?