Quotessence
Home / Authors / E.L. Konigsburg

E.L. Konigsburg Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllBooksArgumentArtArtistsBrainsCandyChildhoodChildrenChildren S BooksChildren S Lit

Famous E.L. Konigsburg Quotes

“I think you should learn, of course, and 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 inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.”

Learning
Book:From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Create image

“Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years--about twelve of them--to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood.”

LifeChildrenReadingLiteratureChildhoodBooksDevelopmentLife ExperiencesExperiencesChildren S BooksChildren S LiteratureBrainsChildren S Lit
Book:Talk, Talk : A Children's Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups
Create image

“Jamie spied a Hershey's almond bar still in its wrapper lying in the corner of the landing. He picked it up and tore open one corner. "Was it bitten into?" asked Claudia. "No," Jamie smiled. "Want half?" "You better not touch it," Claudia warned. "It's probably poisoned or filled with marijuana, so you'll eat it and become either dead or a dope addict". Jamie was irritated. "Couldn't it just happen that someone dropped it?" "I doubt that. Who would drop a whole candy bar and not know it? That's like leaving a statue in a taxi".”

FunnyCandyDope
Book:From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Create image

“She found Jamie standing on that corner, probably one of the most civilized street corners in the whole world, consulting a compass and announcing that when they turned left, they would be heading 'due northwest.' Claudia was tired and cold at the tips; her fingers, her toes, her nose were all cold while the rest of her was perspiring under the weight of her winter clothes. She never liked feeling either very hot or very cold, and she hated feeling both at the same time. 'Head due northwest. Head due northwest,' she mimicked. 'Can't you simply say turn right or turn left as everyone else does? Who do you think you are? Daniel Boone? I'll bet no one's used a compass in Manhattan since Henry Hudson.”

WinterManhattanHenry HudsonDaniel Boone
Book:From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Create image

“What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn't mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time-- especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.”

LoveTeamArgument
Book:From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Create image