Quotes by Adam Gidwitz

You see, to find the brightest wisdom one must pass through the darkest zones. And through the darkest zones there can be no guide. No guide, that is, but courage

Once upon a time, fairy tales were AWESOME!

And I read something else, Jacob goes on. There was this discussion of the story of Cain and Abel, from the Bible. After Cain kills his brother, God says, The bloods of your brother call out to me. Not blood. Bloods. Weird, right? So the Talmud tries to explain it.I can explain it, says William. The scribe was drunk.William! cries Jeanne. The Bible is written by God!And copied by scribes, the big boy replies. Who get drunk. A lot. Trust me.Jacob is laughing. The rabbis have a different explanation. The Talmud says its bloods because Cain didnt only spill Abels blood. He spilled the blood of Abel and all the descendants he never had.Huh!And then it says something like, Whoever destroys a single life destroys the whole world. And whoever saves a single life saves the whole world.There are sheep in the meadow beside the road. Gwenforte walks up to the low stone wall, and one sheep--a ram--doesnt run away. They sniff each others noses. Her white fur beside the rams wool--two textures, two colors, both called white in our inadequate language. Jeanne is thinking about something. At last, she shares it. William, you said that it takes a lifetime to make a book.Thats right.One book? A whole lifetime?William nods. A scribe might copy out a single book for years. An illuminator would then take it and work on it for longer still. Not to mention the tanner who made the parchment, and the bookbinder who stitched the book together, and the librarian who worked to get the book for the library and keep it safe from mold and thieves and clumsy monks with ink pots and dirty hands. And some books have authors, too, like Saint Augustine or Rabbi Yehuda. When you think about it, each book is a lot of lives. Dozens and dozens of them.Dozens and dozens of lives, Jeanne says. And each life a whole world.We saved five books, says Jacob. How many worlds is that?William smiles. I dont know. A lot. A whole lot.

How could he hate the Jews and yet feel sick when they were attacked? Louis hated peasants, too, apparently, and yet he had no problem sitting beside Jeanne - hoisting her in the air and dancing even. Jacob tried to turn this over in his head, around and around, like the cartwheels beneath him. But after a while, he gave up. People were too strange to understand, he decided. They were like life. And also that cheese. Too many things at once.

Whether you go your separate ways or stay together, you will continue to witness--against ignorance, against cruelty, and on behalf of all that is beautiful about this strange and crooked world.

There is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children.

There is something embarrassing about someone elses grief. It is hard to know what to do around it. The right answer, always, is hugs.

In Hebrew, satan means an advocate of the alternative, the one who makes the arguments you dont know how to refute. Michelangelo looked to the old Jew, still grinning wickedly in the corner. That satan is my best friend.

For, in life, it is in the darkest zones one finds the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom.

Inside her, great castles of comprehension, models of the world as she had understood it, shivered. She could not decide whether to let them crumble or to try desperately to save them.

Being the reader of a dark fairy tale is much like being the hero of one. Our lives are filled with pain, boredom, and fear. We want to venture into the dark wood, to see the oddities and the beauties it holds, and to test ourselves against them. So we pick up a book of fairy tales. The real ones. THe weird ones. The dark ones. We see oddities and beauties galore. We test our courage and our understanding. Finally, we put the book down and return to our lives. And hopefully, just like the hero of the fairy tale, we return stronger, richer, and wiser. In difficult times - of recession and violence and political bitterness - we long for a dark forest to which we can escape; and from which we can return, better than we were before.

Sometimes, it turns out, the most important decisions in life are made by your dog.

She looked up, over the bandage that was nestled under her chin, and saw that the big-belly man with the red beard was starting at her, shaking his head. He looked like he was crying. I got ya this time, he whispered, as if to himself. This time, I got ya.