Quotes by Margaret Brown

“If you become a bird and fly away from me, I will be a tree that you come home to.””

“When the groundhog casts his shadowAnd the small birds singAnd the pussywillows happenAnd the sun shines warmAnd when the peepers peepThen it is Spring””

“Goodnight nobody, goodnight mush””

“I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.””

“Dear Father, hear and bless thy beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness small things that have no words.””

“Nights and days came and passedAnd summer and winterand the rain.And it was good to be a little Island.A part of the worldand a world of its ownAll surrounded by the bright blue sea.””

“Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.””

“Sometimes when I am dusting the mirror with the grapes I look at myself in it, although I know it is vanity. In the afternoon light of the parlour my skin is a pale mauve, like a faded bruise, and my teeth are greenish. I think of all the things that have been written about me - that I am inhuman female demon, that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard forced against my will and in danger of my own life, that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also have brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?””

“He was a funny old dog. He liked strawberries.””

“It's a long time that I've loved you. Never, never go away.””

“What's that?" said the cat-- "Faith." "To believe what I tell you about what your don't know," said the fish.””

“I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.””

“She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.””