Top 40 Adam Gidwitz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Home is where you can be yourself.”

— Adam Gidwitz

2. “Maybe I’ve been wanting the wrong things.”

— Adam Gidwitz

3. “Once upon a time, fairy tales were AWESOME!”

— Adam Gidwitz

4. “But beware, dear reader. For we go out into the wide, wild world, looking to change, looking to grow, looking for wisdom. But wisdom is hard to come by, and once achieved, it is very easily lost. Especially when one is leaving the wide, wild world – and returning to the place you once fled.”

— Adam Gidwitz

5. “You see, to find the brightest wisdom one must pass through the darkest zones. And through the darkest zones there can be no guide. No guide, that is, but courage.”

— Adam Gidwitz

6. “For, in life, it is in the darkest zones one finds the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom.”

— Adam Gidwitz

7. “You see, Hansel and Gretel don’t just show up at the end of this story. They show up. And then they get their heads cut off. Just thought you’d like to know.”

— Adam Gidwitz

8. “Whoever destroys a single life destroys the whole world. And whoever saves a single life saves the whole world.”

— Adam Gidwitz

9. “The oven became hotter and hotter, and Hansel began to sweat. Then a delicious smell wafted to his nostrils. Oh no! he thought. I’m cooking! He sniffed at the air. And I smell delicious!”

— Adam Gidwitz

10. “Whether you go your separate ways or stay together, you will continue to witness – against ignorance, against cruelty, and on behalf of all that is beautiful about this strange and crooked world.”

— Adam Gidwitz

11. “The mind is like a muddy road. Two ruts run down its center, from all the carts that have passed that way. No matter how many carts try to roll alongside the ruts, to stay out of the mud, sooner or later, a turn here or a jolt there will send them down into the ruts for good. Just so is the mind. As hard as we try to keep our thoughts out of the old ways, the old patterns, the old ruts, any little jog or jerk will send them right back down into the mud.”

— Adam Gidwitz

12. “You are like pomegranates split open. Even the emptiest among you are as full of good as a pomegranate is full of seed.”

— Adam Gidwitz

13. “There is a certain kind of pain that can change you. Even the strongest sword, when placed in a raging fire, will soften and bend and change its form.”

— Adam Gidwitz

14. “There are some people in this world who have magic in them, whose very presence makes you happier. Some of those people, it turns out, are children.”

— Adam Gidwitz

15. “There is something embarrassing about someone else’s grief. It is hard to know what to do around it. The right answer, always, is hugs.”

— Adam Gidwitz

16. “If we could hear our own songs, if we could see God’s creation the way God does, we would know it’s the most beautiful song there is.”

— Adam Gidwitz

17. “Sometimes, it turns out, the most important decisions in life are made by your dog.”

— Adam Gidwitz

18. “He’s a child. But he looks like the kind of child who has seen too much of life, who’s seen more than most adults. His eyes are both sharp and dead at the same time. As if he won’t miss anything, because he’s seen it all already.”

— Adam Gidwitz

19. “How could he hate the Jews and yet feel sick when they were attacked? Louis hated peasants, too, apparently, and yet he had no problem sitting beside Jeanne – hoisting her in the air and dancing even. Jacob tried to turn this over in his head, around and around, like the cartwheels beneath him. But after a while, he gave up. People were too strange to understand, he decided. They were like life. And also that cheese. Too many things at once.”

— Adam Gidwitz

20. “No, of course it can’t. The moon can eat children, and fingers can open doors, and people’s heads can be put back on. But rain? Talk? Don’t be ridiculous. Good thinking, Gretel dear. Good thinking.”

— Adam Gidwitz

21. “To review: We have a dog that’s been resurrected, a peasant girl who sees the future, a supernaturally strong oblate, and a Jewish boy with the power of miraculous healing.”

— Adam Gidwitz

22. “Don’t bring your morality around me. Morals is for people who’s already got food.”

— Adam Gidwitz

23. “Inside her, great castles of comprehension, models of the world as she had understood it, shivered. She could not decide whether to let them crumble or to try desperately to save them.”

— Adam Gidwitz

24. “There is a power in children. There is a belief. A strength. A joy that makes just about anything possible.”

— Adam Gidwitz

25. “Distinguishing the voice of God and the voices of those around us is no easy task. What makes you special, children, beyond your miracles, is that you hear God’s voice clearly, and when you hear it, you act upon it.”

— Adam Gidwitz

26. “Anger is a weed... It grows up through the soil, choking every other plant. You must stamp it out. Don’t let it enter your garden. Stamp out your anger until it never comes back.”

— Adam Gidwitz

27. “Well, don’t eat my house!’ the baker woman.”

— Adam Gidwitz

28. “A tale dark and Grimm is my favorite book of all time because it gives me the chills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

— Adam Gidwitz

29. “Because, you see, every triumph begins with failure.”

— Adam Gidwitz

30. “The young man leaped from his chair and began to chant the words of a dark curse, but before he could finish someone came up behind him and knocked him unconscious with a tray of sausages.”

— Adam Gidwitz

31. “A hug from a child! he exclaims. Perhaps God’s greatest invention!”

— Adam Gidwitz

32. “Second of all, those fairy tales that you hear over and over and over again aren’t even the REAL fairy tales. Has your teacher ever said to you, “Today, children, we’re going to read a Cinderella story where the stepsisters cut off their toes and their heels with a butcher’s knife! And then they get their eyes pecked out by birds! Ready? Is everyone sitting crisscross-applesauce?”

— Adam Gidwitz

33. “Ale for a tale. That’s the fairest trade I know.”

— Adam Gidwitz

34. “The versions of these stories that most people tell are indeed cute and sweet and incredibly, mind-numbingly, want-to-hit-yourself-in-the-head-with-a-sledgehammer-ingly-boring.”

— Adam Gidwitz

35. “In Hebrew, satan means an advocate of the alternative, the one who makes the arguments you don’t know how to refute.” Michelangelo looked to the old Jew, still grinning wickedly in the corner. “That satan is my best friend.”

— Adam Gidwitz

36. “No matter how much wisdom is in a book, is it right to trade your life for it?”

— Adam Gidwitz

37. “And if this seems strange to you – that, under these difficult, frightening, and outlandish circumstances, children might be happy... well, then you don’t know all that much about children.”

— Adam Gidwitz

38. “Indiscreet, dear girl, means we shouldn’t have been talking about what we were talking about where we were talking about it.”

— Adam Gidwitz

39. “Because God does not work like poof! God works through people. Like you. It’s a strange way to run the world. Yes, even to me it is mysterious. Full of wonders – and endlessly maddening.”

— Adam Gidwitz

40. “When you think about it, each book is a lot of lives. Dozens and dozens of them.”

— Adam Gidwitz

41. “Since days of old, God has always worked his miracles through those we least expect. The weakest, the poorest, the youngest.”

— Adam Gidwitz

42. “But God keeps making stupid jokes.”

— Adam Gidwitz

43. “What you would hate to have done to you – do not do to other people. That is the whole of the Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go, and study.”

— Adam Gidwitz

44. “A “blind,” in case you don’t know, is where a hunter waits for his quarry. “Quarry,” in case you don’t know, is what you call the animal that the hunter is trying to kill. If you don’t know what “animal” or “trying” or “kill” means, this book is probably above your reading level.”

— Adam Gidwitz

45. “BANG! The bird dropped the millstone right on his head. And it sang, What a beautiful bird am I!”

— Adam Gidwitz

46. “A scribe might copy out a single book for years. An illuminator would then take it and work on it for longer still. Not to mention the tanner who made the parchment, and the bookbinder who stitched the book together, and the librarian who worked to get the book for the library and keep it safe from mold and thieves and clumsy monks with ink pots and dirty hands.”

— Adam Gidwitz