109 Quotes by Natalie Babbitt

I was having that dream again, the good one where we’re all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.

Mae Tuck, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, too, had all looked exactly the same for eighty-seven years.

The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.

The first house only is important; the first house, the road, and the wood.

For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.

That’s what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so’s we can’t move on. We ain’t part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing.

The pastures, fields, and scrubby groves they crossed were vigorous with bees, and crickets leapt before them as if each step released a spring and flung them up like pebbles.

Outside, the night seemed poised on tiptoe, waiting, waiting, holding its breath for the storm.

These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.