E. L. Konigsburg Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

Jamie, you know, you could go clear around the world and still come home wondering if the tuna fish sandwiches at Chock Full O'Nuts still cost thirty-five cents.

E. L. Konigsburg
Can you know excellence if you've never seen it? Can you know good if you have seen only bad?

E. L. Konigsburg
Because way down deep they know that civilized people have to preserve rare birds.

E. L. Konigsburg
Every job in the world has some built-in boredom. No man can stay excited about something every minute he is doing it. Routine is as necessary to life as water is to beer; it is the base that holds the flavors and spices together.

E. L. Konigsburg
I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.

E. L. Konigsburg
The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary.

E. L. Konigsburg
How can you know what is missing if you've never met it? You must know of something's existence before you can notice its absence.

E. L. Konigsburg
I don't think there is any feeling I like more than the one that someone is glad to see me. —Connor Kane

E. L. Konigsburg
Nathan, how can you stand playing the same piece over and over again?" And Grandpa Nate answered, "Why don't you ask me how I can stand making love to the same woman over and over again?

E. L. Konigsburg
After a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret is no fun. And although you don't want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.

E. L. Konigsburg
They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.

E. L. Konigsburg
I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.

E. L. Konigsburg
Lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.

E. L. Konigsburg
Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.

E. L. Konigsburg
When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else.

E. L. Konigsburg
Never have a long conversation with anyone who says "between you and I.

E. L. Konigsburg
Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space — it makes connections.

E. L. Konigsburg
Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides.

E. L. Konigsburg
I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.

E. L. Konigsburg
It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.

E. L. Konigsburg
A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry.

E. L. Konigsburg
Five minutes of planning are worth fifteen minutes of just looking.

E. L. Konigsburg
Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.

E. L. Konigsburg
Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.

E. L. Konigsburg
Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside, where it counts.

E. L. Konigsburg
I keep telling you that often the search proves more profitable than the goal.

E. L. Konigsburg
Every now and then, a person must do something simply because he wants to, because it seems to him worth doing. And that does not make it worthless or a waste of time.

E. L. Konigsburg
The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.

E. L. Konigsburg
Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.

E. L. Konigsburg
There were times in school when a person had to do things fast, cheap, and without character.

E. L. Konigsburg