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Can you know excellence if you've never seen it? Can you know good if you have seen only bad?

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
Excellence
Seen
Good
Never

More quotes by E. L. Konigsburg

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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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I've been the oldest child since before you were born
E. L. Konigsburg
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Ninety percent of who you are is invisible. - Mrs. Zender
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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Lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.
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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It often takes more courage to be a passenger than a driver.
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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The eyes are the windows of the soul.... If someone was to look into your eyes, what would you want them to see?
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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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.
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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Indecisiveness wears a person out.
E. L. Konigsburg
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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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True simplicity is elegant.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.
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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Never have a long conversation with anyone who says between you and I.
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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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