109 Quotes by Natalie Babbitt

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

I can’t help what I dream.

Don’t fear death, fear the un-lived life.

And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We’re plain as salt, us Tucks. We don’t deserve no blessings – if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don’t see how we deserve to be cursed, if it’s a curse. Still – there’s no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don’t bring changes.

Belong to yourself, then, like me,” said Big Tom. “That way, when changes come, you’ll always be ready to hold your tail high and move along.

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.

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.

So she was unprepared for the homely little house beside the pond, unprepared for the gentle eddies of dust, the silver cobwebs, the mouse who lived – and welcome to him! – in a table drawer.

Well, boys,” she said, “here it is. The worst is happening at last.