Kate DiCamillo Quotes

“It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.”

“There ain’t no way you can hold on to something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”

“Winn-Dixie started to snore, and I nudged him with my foot to try to make him quit. I wanted to hear the rest of the story. It was important to me to hear how Littmus survived after losing everything he loved.”

“I think the preacher thinks about my mama all the time, too. He’s still in love with her...But he doesn’t tell me that. He won’t talk to me about her at all.”

“All of a sudden it was hard for me to talk. I loved the preacher so much. I loved him because he loved Winn-Dixie. I loved him because he was going to forgive Winn-Dixie for being afraid. But most of all, I loved him for putting his arms around Winn-Dixie like that, like he was already trying to keep him safe.”

“But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.”

″‘See,’ I said, ‘you don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old. I can’t hardly remember her. And I bet you don’t remember your mama much either. So we’re almost like orphans.‘”

“Winn-Dixie looked straight at me when I said that to him, like he was feeling relieved to finally have somebody understand his situation. I nodded my head at him and went on talking.”

“I stayed where I was and studied the tree. I wondered if my mama, wherever she was, had a tree full of bottles; and I wondered if I was a ghost to her, the same way she sometimes seemed like a ghost to me”

″‘She loved you very much.’ ‘But she left me,’ I told him. ‘She left us,’ said the preacher softly...‘She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.‘”

“You know, my eyes ain’t too good at all. I can’t see nothing but the general shape of things, so I got to rely on my heart. Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so as I can see you with my heart.”

“I was just getting ready to stick my tongue out at them; but then I thought about what Miss Franny said, about war being hell, and I thought about what Gloria Dump said, about not judging them too hard. And so I just waved instead.”

“Some people have a strange way of going about making friends”

“I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because the music is better if someone is listening to it.”

“Thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other.”

“He held out his hand to help me up. And I took it. I let him pull me to my feet.”

″‘Are you looking for a home?’ the preacher asked, real soft, to Winn-Dixie. Winn-Dixie wagged his tail. ‘Well,’ the preacher said. ‘I guess you’ve found one.‘”

“My daddy is a good preacher and a nice man, but sometimes it’s hard for me to think about him as my daddy, because he spends so much time preaching or thinking about preaching or getting ready to preach. And so, in my mind, I think of him as ‘the preacher.‘”

″‘When I told you your mama took everything with her, I forgot one thing, one very important thing she left behind.’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Thank God your mama left me you.‘”

“I could see that Winn-Dixie was having a good effect on the preacher. He was making him poke his head out of his shell.”

“Because you, mouse, can tell Gregory a story. Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”

“But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, ‘I forgive you, Pa.‘”

“Despereaux stared up at her in wonder. The Pea, he decided, looked just like the picture of the fair maiden in the book in the library. The princess smiled at Despereaux again, and this time, Despereaux smiled back. And then, something incredible happened: The mouse fell in love.”

″‘I will be brave,’ thought Despereaux. ‘I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armor. I will be brave for Princess Pea.‘”

“It is true. Despereaux’s eyes should not have been open. But they were. He was staring at the sun reflecting off his mother’s mirror. The light was shining on the ceiling in an oval of brilliance, and he was smiling up at the sight.”

“He spent his days as he wanted: He wandered through the rooms of the castle, staring dreamily at the light streaming in through the stained-glass windows. He went to the library and read over and over again the story of the fair maiden and the knight who rescued her. And he discovered, finally, the source of the honey-sweet sound. The sound was music.”

″‘He cannot, he simply cannot be my son,’ Lester said. He clutched his whiskers with his front paws and shook his head from side to side in despair.”

″‘Once upon a time,’ he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”

“Say it, reader. Say the word ‘quest’ out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn’t it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.”

“Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains.”

“But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.”

“But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.”

“But answer me this: how can a story end happily if there is no love?”

“But, in truth, he was not very interested in what people had to say. And also, he did not care for Abilene’s parents and their condescending manner toward him. All adults, in fact, condescended to him.”

“Edward did not care at all for the word bunny. He found it derogatory in the extreme.”

“Edward’s mistress was a ten-year-old, dark-haired girl named Abilene Tulane, who thought almost as highly of Edward as Edward thought of himself.”

“The rabbit, too, was experiencing a great emotion. But it was not love. It was annoyance that he had been so mightily inconvenienced, that he had been handled by the maid as cavalierly as an inanimate object- a serving bowl, say, or a teapot.”

“What an elegant figure he cut! Edward never ceased to be amazed at his own fineness.”

“Of all the seasons of the year, the rabbit most preferred winter, for the sun set early then and the dining-room windows became dark and Edward could see his own reflection in the glass. And what a reflection it was!”