Home > Author > Cynthia Rylant
21 " And I love being a writer because I want to leave something here on earth to make it better, prettier, stronger. I want to do something important in my life, and I think that adding beauty to the world with books like The Relatives Came or Waiting to Waltz or Henry and Mudge and the Forever Sea really is important. Every person is able to add beauty, whether by growing flowers, or singing, or cooking luscious meals, or raising sweet pets. Every part of life can be art. I am so grateful to be a writer. I hope every child grows up and finds something to do that will seem important and that will seem precious. Happy living and, especially, happy playing. "
― Cynthia Rylant
22 " The war was just a mile or so away, and I wondered at my simply walking to it, as I might walk to the market or to school. Today I will walk to the war. "
― Cynthia Rylant , I Had Seen Castles
23 " I know I must have been loved like that, even if I can’t remember it. I must have; otherwise, how could I even recognize love when I saw it that night between Ob and May? Before she died, I know my mother must have loved to comb my shiny hair and rub that Johnson’s baby lotion up and down my arms and wrap me up and hold and hold me all night long. She must have known she wasn’t going to live and she must have held me longer than any other mother might, so I’d have enough love in me to know what love was when I saw it or felt it again. "
― Cynthia Rylant , Missing May
24 " It is a grace that comes, unexpected, after tragedy- this reminder that most hearts are good. "
25 " Drop some of them bricks you keep hauling around with you. Life just ain't that heavy. "
26 " It is almost impossible for a parent to hold a secret from a child. Children, without the skills of language, spend years developing instead an intuition. By the time they are fifteen, as I was, they are masters of a kind of clairvoyance that tells them, He is depressed, He is frightened, He is pleased. "
27 " A castle. Far off, in the hills in the distance. It was as if I were looking at a postcard from my childhood, the feeling was so familiar, and I thought for a moment that the castle had been built by me. I line up all the little knights that lay in the box in the basement: castle.And sheep. Sheep grazing in a nearby meadow. . . .The mortar shells began to land in that meadow, and the sheep were hit, and lay bloody, half-alive, their bowels spilling among the meadow flowers. "
28 " It is not an easy job raising three children, especially if those children seem always to be hanging upside down in a tree. Such was the life of Stumpy Squirrel, the busiest squirrel mother in all of Gooseberry Park. It was all Murray’s fault, of course. Bats most naturally hang upside down and are good at it. Murray was a bit of a show-off anyway, so he swung by his toes whenever anyone passing by happened to look up. Murray was Stumpy’s tree mate, best friend, and self-appointed uncle to her three children: Sparrow, Top, and Bottom. And he could be a very naughty influence, as when he taught the children to hang by their toes, and they drew all sorts of remarks from the park residents as a result. "
― Cynthia Rylant , Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan (Gooseberry Park, #2)
29 " Joe sat on the couch, his long legs sprawled in front of him, and listened to the latest report of soldiers dead. The walls blinked and his face, too, went black, white, black, white, as the pictures crossed the television screen. "
― Cynthia Rylant , A Blue-Eyed Daisy