Russell Hoban Quotes

“She took a good look at him. There was no giant. It was just the chair and her bathrobe. So she went to bed again.”

“She pulled off her covers and stood on her bed so she could look out the window. She saw a moth bumping against the window. Bump and thump. His wings smacked the glass.”

″ ‘There is a tiger in my room,’ said Frances. ‘Did it bite you?’ said Father. ‘No’, said Frances. ‘Dd he scratch you?’ said Mother. ‘No,’ said Frances. ‘Then he is a friendly tiger’, said Father. ‘He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep.’ ”

“There were so many giants and tigers and scary and exciting things before, that I am pretty tired now. That is just a moth, and he is only doing his job, the same as the wind. His job is bumping and thumping and my job is to sleep.”

″ ‘That’s a good lunch,’ said Albert. ‘I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.’ ”

″ ‘So do I’, said Frances, and she made the lobster-salad sandwich, the celery, the carrot sticks, and the olives come out even.”

″ ‘What a lovely egg,’ said Father. ‘If there is one thing I am fond of for breakfast, it is a soft-boiled egg.’ ‘Yes’, said Mother, spooning up egg for the baby, ‘it is just the thing to start the day off right’. ”

″ ‘S is for sailboat. T is for tiger. U is for underwear, down in the drier…’ Frances stopped because ‘drier’ did not sound like ‘tiger’. She started to think about tigers. She thought about big tigers and little tigers, baby tigers and mother and father tigers, sister tigers and brother tigers, aunt tigers and uncle tigers.”

″ ‘Aren’t you worried that maybe I will get sick and all my teeth fall out from eating so much bread and jam?’ asked Frances. ‘I don’t think that will happen for quite a while’, said Mother, ‘So eat it all up and enjoy it.’ ”

“She saw something big and dark. ‘Giants are big and dark’, she thought. ‘Maybe that is a giant. I think it is a giant. I think that giant wants to get me.’ ”

“She sang the song very softly: ‘I do not like the way you slide, I do not like your soft inside, I do not like you lots of ways, And I could do for many days without eggs’ ”

“He took a bite of sandwich,a bite of pickle, a bite of hardboiled egg, and a drink of milk. Then he sprinkled more salt on the egg and went around again. Albert made the sandwich, the pickle, the gg, and the milk come out even.”

“Francis ate her bread and jam and drank her milk. Then she went out to the playground and skipped rope. She did not skip as fast as she had skipped in the morning.”

“She closed her eyes, but she still could not sleep. So she began to sing a little song about the alphabet. She made it up as she went along.”

″ ‘But there are other kinds of eggs. There are sunny-side-up and sunny-side-down eggs.’ ‘Yes’, said Frances. ‘But sunny-side-up eggs lie on the plate and look up at you in a funny way. And sunny-side-down eggs just lie on their stomachs and wait’. ”

″ ‘Well’, said Frances, ‘there are many different things to eat and they taste many different ways. But when I have bread and jam I always know what I am getting, and I am always pleased.’ ”

″ ‘Carry me to my room, Father,’ said Frances. ‘All right,’ said Father. ‘Piggyback,’ said Frances. So Father carried her piggyback to her room.”

“She jumped out of bed and went to tell Mother and Father. When she got to their door, she thought about it some more and decided not to tell them. She went back to her room.”

“Frances told her teddy bear to watch. They took turns for a while. Then Frances got tired of it and let Teddy do all the watching.”

“While she waited for the bus she skipped and sang: ‘Jam on biscuits, jam on bread, Jam is the thing I like most, Jam is sticky, jam is sweet, Jam is tasty, jam’s a treat - raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, I’m very FOND…OF…JAM!’ ”

“Then, with his big broken shoes printing his footsteps in the fresh snow, he solemnly danced in a circle, swinging his empty arms up and down. A little black-and-white spotted dog trotting past stopped and sat down to look at him, and for a moment the man and the dog were the only two creatures on the street not moving in a fixed direction.”

“Everything must, in one way or another, go. One does what one is wound to do. It is expected of me that I walk up and down in front of my house; it is expected of you that you drink tea. And it is expected of this young mouse that he go out into the world with his father and dance in a circle.”

″‘What happens when they buy you?’ he asked her. ‘That, of course, is outside of my experience,’ said the elephant, ‘but I should think that one simply goes out into the world and does whatever one does. One dances or balances a ball, as the case may be.‘”

“How far away that other dollhouse seemed now! How far away that other tea party with its elegant ladies and gentleman, and the elephant he had wanted for a mama! The mouse child was on the job and he knew it, but he began to cry.”

“The sound of the living room clock striking midnight could not reach them; they never had permission to speak at all, and they lay in silence until another year had passed and they stood once more beneath the tree.”

“This place is a toyshop, and you are toy mice. People are going to come and buy you for children, because it’s almost a time called Christmas.”

″‘Will you be my mama?’ said the child, ‘and will you sing to me all the time? And can we all stay here together and live in the beautiful house where the party is and not go out into the world?‘”

“The tramp set the mouse and his child down at the edge of the road and wound up the father. ‘Be tramps,’ he said, and turned and walked away with the dog at his heels.”

“Their patent leather shoes had been lost in the trash can; their blue velveteen trousers hung wrinkled and awry; their fur had come unglued in several places, but the mouse and his child were whole again.”

“The tramp looked at the battered wrecks around him in the cold, clear sunlight. He looked down at himself in his ragged clothes. Then he sat down in the car he had slept in, and reached into his pocket for a little screwdriver. While the dog watched quietly, he took the mouse and his child apart to see if he could make them dance again.”

“Oh ho,′ said the crab. His eye-stalks stood straight up, and both eyes stared hard at the sea-thing child. ‘I very much beg your pardon,’ said the crab.”

“One day an albatross landed on the beach, pulled a little stubby black pipe out of his pocket, and sat down to have a smoke. The fiddler crab hid among the rocks, but the sea-thing child came over to talk to the albatross.”

“There’s not such thing as an afraid albatross,” said the albatross. “The ocean wouldn’t bed the ocean without storms. And the ocean is where I live. How can you get lost when you’re were you live? I was born on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and Wandering is my name.”

“The sea-thing child stopped building sea-stone igloos, but sometimes he made little heaps of stones and sea-glass and sea-china, and drew a circle in the sand and around them sat inside the circle.”

“He ran back to the beach and up to the big old seaweed-bearded rocks. Then he ran up and down the beach and gathered together all his sea-stones and sea-glass and sea-china.”

‘Small!’ said the albatross. ‘What isn’t small compared to the ocean! The blue whale’s the biggest thing that swims, and that’s small in the ocean. If the ocean wasn’t big it wouldn’t be the ocean.”

Finally, though, he finds his star, his courage and his ocean self.

Afraid of the wild waves and the storm skies, he meets a fiddler crab with no bow and together they avoid facing their fears.

One stormy night the sea-thing child, a draggled heap of scales and feathers, is flung up on the beach.

“The sea-thing child was restless in the night, and he came out of his sea-stone igloo and went for a walk on the beach all alone, not very close to the edge of the water where the white foam gleamed in the dark.”