Top 48 Quotes & Sayings by Rodman Philbrick

As a writer, I'm convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvelous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone.

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater.

I was never forced to write. At least, I was never forced or even encouraged to write fiction. Creative writing wasn't in the curriculum at my school when I was in sixth grade.

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.

There is no greater compliment for a writer than to have pleased a troubled child.

You can't mess around with young readers - you have to cut straight to the heart of the story. The character can be complex, the plot can have some surprises, but the emotions have to be clear.

I wanted to make the world of 'The Last Book in the Universe' as real as possible, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I decided the world would be a very different place, but people would be pretty much the same.

I am an avid fisherman, and my daily schedule is to write in the morning and then go fishing in the afternoon. In Maine, I fish mostly for stripers, and in the Florida Keys, I go after all kinds of game fish.

I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn't cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

As a kid, books were my great escape and my salvation.

What surprised me most about the Donner tragedy was that, given the terrible circumstances, how anyone survived at all.

I assumed 'Freak the Mighty' was probably too weird and melodramatic to find a publisher. I certainly never expected the book to have a profound influence on my career as a writer, but indeed it has.

I believe that we have the ability to change our lives using our imaginations. Imagination is a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

I have vivid memories of junior high school. I didn't quite know how to deal with kids and make friends and all of that. If you talked to people who knew me at the time, they'd think I was a popular kid in school. But boy, I didn't feel that.

I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids.

After I had written more than a dozen adult genre novels, an editor I knew in New York asked me to write a mystery for young adults.

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors.

Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I wrote Freak the Mighty because Max, the mighty half of Freak the Mighty, insisted and he's bigger than I am.

I could tell you all the medical terminology,' She says. 'But what finally happened is his heart got to big for his body'

Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.

I believe that we have the ability to change our lives using our imaginations. Imagination is a muscle—the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

I think in some way it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows.

I never had a brian till freak came along.

Matter of fact, I watch tons of tube, but I also read tons of books so I can figure out what's true and what's fake, which isn't always easy. Books are like truth serum--if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.

Expel the object!" Freak shouts. "Regurgitate, you big moron!" and he gives me another thump and I cough up this yucky mess, but I'm still laughing so hard my nose is running.

His heart was simply to big for his body.

Every word is part of a picture, Every sentence is a picture. All you have to do is link them together.

You ever notice how long it takes for things to happen when you know they're supposed to happen? My fake Walkman has a built-in alarm, and I set it for two in the morning and wear the headphones to bed, but before you can wake up you have to fall asleep, and I never DO fall asleep because I keep waiting for the alarm to go off.

Bean finds the best apple in our tree and hands it up to me. "You know what this tastes like when you first bite into it?" she asks. "No, what?" "Blue sky." "You're zoomed." "You ever eat blue sky?" "No," I admit. "Try it sometime," she says. "It's apple-flavored.

The future is like the moon. You never expect to go there, or think about what it might be like.

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do.

You don't need a time machine if you know how to remember.

I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for awhile, and that's the truth, the whole truth. The unvanquished truth, is how Freak would say it, and for a long time it was him who did the talking.

Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of everything, even pain.

The only real treasure is in your head. Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you

It's fun to be amazing, to be the star of the show, to have everyone watching you-even if you have to act like a pig.

Remembering is a great invention of the mind.

remembering is a great invention of the mind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether it really happened or not.

Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

It all boils down to this: A person has only two options in life, to do something or to do nothing.

Keep marching boys and girls. Keep marching

I'm thinking maybe letting the latches burn is the right idea. Let everything burn until there's nothing left but ashes and cool rain.

I used to belong to a family unit, with a foster mom and dad and my little sister, Bean, but that's over and I don't want to talk about what happened , or how unfair it was. Not yet. The less said about that the better, because if there's one thing I learned from Ryter it's that you can't always be looking backward or something will hit you from the front.