38 Quotes by Paul Fleischman

You can’t see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it’s there. It’s the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland.

That small circle of earth became a second home to both of us. Gardening boring? Never! It has surprise, tragedy, startling developments – a soap opera growing out of the ground. I’d forgotten that tremolo of expectation produced by a tiny forest of sprouts.

A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone’s voice.

Television, I’m afraid, has isolated us more than race, class, or ethnicity.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don’t have, or disliking what you have.

The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent’s idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm.

There’s plenty about my life I can’t change. Can’t bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can’t make the world loving and kind. Can’t change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot – I can change that. Can change it big. Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day.

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don’t live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band.

It was a girl playing a harp, like in an orchestra. It was in this tree at our campsite. And since it was breezy weather that weekend, the girl’s arms were almost always turning.