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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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Ninety percent of who you are is invisible. - Mrs. Zender
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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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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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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True simplicity is elegant.
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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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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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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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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...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 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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Kids want acceptance from their peers, but in two different, opposing ways: They want to be like everyone else and they want to be different from everyone else. So the question is: How do you reconcile these opposing longings?
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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Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space -- it makes connections.
E. L. Konigsburg
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Indecisiveness wears a person out.
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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Biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.
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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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