Natalie Babbitt quotes

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Life And Love #Live Life #Forever

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Summer #Spring #Sunset

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Summer #August #Years

It'd be nice to have a new name, to start with, one that's not all worn out from being called so much.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Nice #Names #Worn

Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Lonely #Reading #Bored

For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Eternity #Hours #Enough

Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Fear Of Death

Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Love #Life #Relationship

Right after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Children #Years #Next

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Reading #Drawing #Ohio

I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Husband #Wonderful

the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Summer #Dog #Sorry

The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Ocean #Taken #Whales

my mother always found me out. Always. She's been dead for thirty-five years, but I have this feeling that even now she's watching.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Mother #Years #Feelings

in reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Lonely #Book #Reading

Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Fall #Trying #Use

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Dream #Branches #Facts

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Philosophy #Simple #Magnificent

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Blessing #Dying #Pieces

You dont have to live forever just live.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Forever #Just Live #Live Forever

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summer's day, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Summer #Fate #Long

Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.
-- Natalie Babbitt

#Rocks #Dying #Useless