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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'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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By the time they get to 6th grade honor roll students won't risk making a mistake, and sometimes to be successful, you have to risk making mistakes.
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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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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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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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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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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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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Indecisiveness wears a person out.
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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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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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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Biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.
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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...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 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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Ninety percent of who you are is invisible. - Mrs. Zender
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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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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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