“She didn’t care about the food. . . . It was the book she wanted. . . . She wouldn’t tolerate having it given to her by a lonely, pathetic old woman. Stealing it on the other hand, seemed a little more acceptable. Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.”
“No, thank you. I have enough books at home. Maybe another time. I’m rereading something else with my papa. You know, the one I stole from the fire that night.”
The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.
″‘My dear old furry frump,’ he said, ‘do you know anyone in the whole world who wouldn’t swipe a few chickens if his children were starving to death?‘”
“Guilt struck Little-Faith on the head with a great club that was in his hand and knocked him flat to the ground, where he lay bleeding profusely and in danger of dying. The thieves just stood by watching him bleed to death, but then heard someone coming on the road. They were afraid it might be Great-Grace who lives in the town of Good-Confidence. They quickly departed and left this good man to fend for himself.”
“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60’s. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”
“Those that are found guilty of theft among them are bound to make restitution to the owner, and not, as it is in other places, to the prince, for they reckon that the prince has no more right to the stolen goods than the thief.”
“If you do not find a remedy to these evils it is a vain thing to boast of your severity in punishing theft, which, though it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient; for if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”
“Asagai, while I was sleeping in that bed in there, people went out and took the future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me – they just went out and changed my life.”
“I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine.”
“In life, there are only four kinds of girls:
The girl who played with fire.
The girl who opened Pandora’s Box.
The girl who gave Adam the apple.
And the girl whose best friend stole her boyfriend.”
“somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff
not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street
but somenody almost walked off wid alla my stuff
like a kleptomaniac workin hard and forgettin while stealin
this is mine
this aint yr stuff
now why dont you put me back and let me hang out in my own self...”
″...somebody almost walke off wid alla my stuff
and didnt care enuf to send a not home sayin
i waz late fo my solo conversation
or two sizes too small for my own tacky skirts
what can anybody do wit somethin of no value on
a open market
did you getta dime for my things
hey man
where are you goin wid alla my stuff
this is a woman’s trip and i need my stuff
to ohh and ahh abt
daddy
i gotta mainline nmber
from my own shit
now wontchu put me back
and let me play this duet
wit this silver ring in my nose...”
“I will decide how long you must work for each of the items you stole, and it will be up to me to decide when you have earned back your notebook, if it still exists.”
“All he knew was that she was beautiful...and that, somehow, despite everything he’d done to try to stop it from happening, she’d managed to steal his heart one sassy smile at a time.”
“The enemy wants to steal our peace and keep us stirred up, anxious, fearful, upset, and always in a stance of waiting for something terrible to happen at any minute.”
“The enemy wants to steal our peace and keep us stirred up, anxious, fearful, upset, and always in a stance of waiting for something terrible to happen at any minute.”
“She had bribed a teacher. She had stolen opium. She had burned herself, lied to her foster parents, abandoned her responsibilities at the store, and broken a marriage deal. And she was going to Sinegard.”
″‘He’s already lacking a finger. He has stolen before. He must have known the punishment. If he valued his hand so much, why did he steal?’
‘How do we know? How do we know what has driven the poor wretch to steal? How do we know what he has to bear?‘”
“So the Elephant stretched out his trunk and took an ice cream cone for himself and an ice cream cone for the Bad Baby, and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road, with the ice-cream man running after.
“So the Elephant stretched out his trunk and took an pie for himself and an pie for the Bad Baby, and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road, with the ice-cream man and the pork butcher both running after.
“So the Elephant stretched out his trunk and took some crisps for himself and some crisps for the Bad Baby, and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road, with the ice-cream man, and the pork butcher, and the baker, and the snack-bar man, all running after.”
″...if I die tonight I’m in a state of sin for stealing and I could go straight to hell stuffed with fish and chips but it’s Saturday and if the priests are still in the confession boxes I can clear my soul after my feed.”
“When he comes to the sixteenth house, he stops. There on the front step is a big brown box with little holes in it. ‘That’s a nice big brown box with little holes in it,’ says Burglar Bill. ‘I’ll have that.‘”
″‘How’s it goin’, lad?′ she would say, giving sly slaps of apparent goodwill on various parts of the goalkeeper’s person. By this cunning form of greeting she had caught out a stream of employees who had been fiddling- having one pocket for Maggie and one for themselves.”
“The burglar who did this may be studying mathematics and doesn’t have the money to buy books. He heard that you were a famous mathematician and so he came here and hit you on the head...”
“A week’s detention would not prevent Jan from stealing again. Could Ruth prevent him? She was a remarkable girl and, if anybody could help him, it was she. But after five years of war and twisted living, such cases were too often beyond remedy.”
“Writing paper is scarce in this house, and I had no intention of tearing sheets out of this exercise book, which is a superb sixpenny one the Vicar gave me. In the end, Miss Marcy took the middle pages out of her library record, which gave us a pleasant feeling that we were stealing from the government, and then we sat round the table and elected her chairman.”