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I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.

E. L. Konigsburg

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E. L. Konigsburg
Age: 83 †
Born: 1930
Born: February 10
Died: 2013
Died: April 19
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg
E.L. Konigsburg
Take
Avoid
Believe
Western
Way
Civilization
Time
Hurt
Hurting
People
Maybe
Courtesy
Four
Tea
Feelings
Decline
Thought
Clock

More quotes by E. L. Konigsburg

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It often takes more courage to be a passenger than a driver.
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Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.
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The eyes are the windows of the soul.... If someone was to look into your eyes, what would you want them to see?
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A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space -- it makes connections.
E. L. Konigsburg
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I don't think there is any feeling I like more than the one that someone is glad to see me. —Connor Kane
E. L. Konigsburg
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I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Nathan, how can you stand playing the same piece over and over again? And Grandpa Nate answered, Why don't you ask me how I can stand making love to the same woman over and over again?
E. L. Konigsburg
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Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret us no fun. And although you dont want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.
E. L. Konigsburg
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I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.
E. L. Konigsburg
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It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.
E. L. Konigsburg
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True simplicity is elegant.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Indecisiveness wears a person out.
E. L. Konigsburg
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But happiness is not always loud and bright and crowded. Happiness ripens like a watermelon, sweet and rosy on the inside with only a thin top layer altogether free of small black pits. And, like a watermelon, the whole thing can be covered with a plain dark rind.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.
E. L. Konigsburg
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...just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.
E. L. Konigsburg
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I've been the oldest child since before you were born
E. L. Konigsburg
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They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.
E. L. Konigsburg