[They were] known to make out while eating shepherd’s pie, which is not a euphemism[.]
– Maureen Johnson, THE NAME OF THE STAR
I will laugh about this one day, I told myself. I will laugh about it with people so clever and sophisticated I can’t imagine them properly now.
– Jo Walters, AMONG OTHERS
I whirl around to face him — again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys — maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
– Lauren Oliver, DELIRIUM
(Side question: why is YA so full of constructions like “rushing, tumbling”? Have you ever seen this in a book for adults? Now that I think about it, I think this is even more quintessentially YA than the long-short cadence I wrote about recently. What are the other stylistic quirks of YA?)
“I don’t know many rules to live by,” he’d said. “But here’s one. It’s simple. Don’t put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles — drug or tattoo — and… no inessential penises, either.”
“Inessential penises?” Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. “Is there any such thing as an essential one?”
“When an essential one comes along, you’ll know,” he’d replied.
– Laini Taylor, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE
By the way, I cannot recommend this book enough, but I warn you: the first couple chapters make it seem like it’s going to be a less good book than it is. Just keep going, and then thank me (and Bethany, who told me) with all appropriate effusiveness.
Aunt Emily had spent a lifetime interfering–days–weeks–years. There was nothing she could do better, or that she enjoyed more. To thrust her finger into somebody’s pie and wreck it–that was Aunt Emily for you. Lucinda’s grandmother, having died when her mother was a very little girl, had left Aunt Emily the oldest of the family; and to her had descended that divine right of putting her finger into family pies.
–Ruth Sawyer, ROLLER SKATES
P.S. Just so there’s no confusion with regards to the name, I’d like to state for the record that the above quote is not about me. You can tell because I have no siblings.
…in which Bart and Homer form a tween fiction writing team.
So many vampires, with the fangs and the capes and the medals – nobody knows how they earned them.
- Professor Frink (weird scientist guy), The Simpsons
“Miss Binney, I want to know — how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?”
Miss Binney’s smile seemed to last longer than smiles usually last. Ramona glanced uneasily around and saw that others were waiting with interest for the answer. Everybody wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.
- Beverly Cleary, RAMONA THE PEST
The difference between a brilliant punster and a groan-inducing punster is mostly a matter of how high the threshold is set for public utterance.
– Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr., INSIDE JOKES: USING HUMOR TO REVERSE-ENGINEER THE MIND
He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground.
– Susan Andersen, BABY, I’M YOURS.
…Okay, fine, it’s a typo. Although frankly, putting a typo like this in your book (and then blogging it) is not a bad viral marketing campaign.
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By: Cindy R. Williams,
on 10/28/2009
Dude, I’m crushing on a non-analytical capitalist.
Said with an appropriate amount of self-disdain; followed by emphatic drinking of wine.
Posted in Wednesday Words
By: Cindy R. Williams,
on 10/21/2009
Her ideas of what makes a good illustration for a children’s book are different from those of children.
– Steve Hely, HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST
That’s from a very funny passage in a very funny book. I kept wanting to sic Editorial Anonymous on the characters producing the illustrated children’s book PRUDENCE WHIDDIECOMB: THE GIRL COOPER.
Posted in Wednesday Words
They were all in high spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the greatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise.
– Jane Austen, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Posted in Wednesday Words
“I mean, as well as being a fascist he’s just not very clever.”
– China Mieville, THE CITY & THE CITY
Posted in Mieville, China, Wednesday Words
It felt a little as if we’d found a script that had been written just for us, and we were reading through the beginning quickly — the imaginative, exploratory part back in the museum, and now the factual exposition: “What’s your family like? What’s your favorite subject?” — hurrying so we could get to the part that mattered, whatever that was to be.
– Nancy Garden, ANNIE ON MY MIND
Posted in Annie On My Mind, Garden, Nancy, Wednesday Words
More firmly, Greenwood said, “Sit.”
The dog lifted out of his crouch and stood looking at Greenwood in a fair imitation of His Master’s Voice. Who, he was clearly thinking, was this stranger who knew how to speak Dog?
– Donald Westlake, THE HOT ROCK
Yes, today’s Wednesday Words is also in honor of my new life with Cooper. I am still working on being the Alpha Dog. I went running with Cooper, which was fantastic until he saw a cat. Then my commands were suddenly ineffectual as — hours of “Body Pump” be damned — I strained to hold back the beast. (My reasoning to him that, “That cat lives around here. It has a right to be here.” having failed to sink in.)
The worst, though, was when a small but belligerent dog approached Cooper with a confidence that belied his stature. He continually advanced as I yanked Cooper ever farther back to avoid his hurting the little thing. What a humiliation for Cooper, I thought, forced to retreat in the face of this pipsqueak.
It’s a tough life for a Golden Doodle in Madison.
Posted in Wednesday Words
A lie was so tidy, like a small box you could make with nails and thin pieces of wood and glue. But the truth lay sprawled all over the place like the mess up in the attic.
– Paula Fox, ONE-EYED CAT
Besides liking this metaphor because it captures something I recognize*, I like this because it’s the opposite of that “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…” adage, which I first learned from a CHARLES IN CHARGE episode built around it. When I stop to think about it, it is astounding and horrifying how much of my basic cultural education comes from terrible ’80s sitcoms.
* And am I the only one who sometimes tells small, irrelevant lies, especially to strangers, for exactly this reason? Except then they sometimes spiral out of control and suddenly your tidy little box that you only constructed in the first place to avoid making small talk more complicated than interests either party is like a faulty Jack-in-the-Box of conversational pitfalls that could leap out at any moment and this is what I was saying about not being able to construct metaphors.
Posted in Fox, Paula, One-Eyed Cat, Wednesday Words
Honestly, in the governmental bureaucracy of Winter Park High School, Jasper Hanson was like Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of Athletics and Malfeasance. When a guy like that gets promoted to Executive Vice President of Urine Gunning, immediate action must be taken.
– John Green, PAPER TOWNS
I apologize for the post title, y’all. I have a math midterm tomorrow, is my excuse. Actually, I’m finding that math is a handy excuse for many things. When I’m caught behaving abnormally, I just wave my hand vaguely and say, “Math.” Most people are so horrified by the thought that I might elaborate that they leave it at that.
Posted in Green, John, Paper Towns, Wednesday Words
Tuesday, November 16th, 2004
It is impossible to imagine what the Iraqi feels right nowDo you know that Aya’s grandfather was killed last Thursday by one of the American soldiers’ bullets? When Aya is eight years old and asks me how her grandfather died, what will I answer her? What do you think I should answer her? When I tell her the American soldiers killed him, of course she will ask me why and how and did I do anything about that?
The answer to her question is this post and the others. I can answer her that I did do something about it. I did what I could in that time. I wrote in my blog about what is going on in Iraq.
– Hadiya, IRAQIGIRL: DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL IN IRAQ
* * * * *
IRAQIGIRL is going to print today.
At various points since Emily and I started this blog in January, I’ve mentioned cryptically that I was occupied with a project involving young adult lit that I would write about soon. But somehow I never did write about it.
Just under a year ago, Haymarket Books asked me first to weigh in on, and then eventually to edit, a submission they’d received. It was an Iraqi teenager’s blog, assembled into a manuscript by the journalist John Ross.
And today it’s off to the printer. It hasn’t quite sunk in.
The reason I never wrote about it, I think, is that I’ve been so close to it, so fixated on little details, that it was actually hard to step back and describe it. And now it’s being printed and it is finally, fully out of my hands.
More later. Including the beautiful cover (which, by the way, is not the one on Amazon; it’s better).
Posted in IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, This--like so many things--is all about me, Wednesday Words
…well, maybe my worst enemy.
I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone part and lands in Australia.
- Judith Viorst, ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY
Posted in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Cruz, Ray, Viorst, Judith, Wednesday Words
You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.
- A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
Posted in Milne, A. A., Wednesday Words, Winnie the Pooh
He was a man and I a boy, he was a thief and I was honest, he had seen the world and I had not, but I knew evil better than he did.
– Ursula K. LeGuin, GIFTS
Posted in Gifts, LeGuin, Ursula, Wednesday Words
Being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it’s a matter of not knowing where you aren’t.
- Norton Juster, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
Posted in Juster, Norton, Phantom Tollbooth, The, Uncategorized, Wednesday Words
Mavis peered at me. “But did you change, JuhNEECE? Or are you still the same girl that was taking drugs and messing around with boys?”
“Well, yeah, I changed.” Before, I did all that stuff mostly out of boredom; now I did it at least partly out of spite.
– Janice Erlbaum, GIRLBOMB: A HALFWAY HOMELESS MEMOIR
Posted in Wednesday Words
Where have you been? I had to see “Perks” without benefit of your comments on book or movie.