Top 40 Alan Gratz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Being brave doesn’t mean not being scared. It means overcoming your fear to do what you have to do.”

— Alan Gratz

2. “It’s not who you’re fighting against that matters. It’s what you’re fighting for.”

— Alan Gratz

3. “Life is but a river. It has no beginning, no middle, no end. All we are, all we are worth, is what we do while we float upon it – how we treat our fellow man.”

— Alan Gratz

4. “Good books shouldn’t be hidden away. They should be read by as many people as many times as possible.”

— Alan Gratz

5. “There were some horrors you couldn’t fight and couldn’t change. The real courage was just in enduring them.”

— Alan Gratz

6. “I had managed to scare even the monsters, and when you can scare monsters, you can be sure you’ve become one yourself.”

— Alan Gratz

7. “But as she watched Lito and Papi lift up Ivan’s body, the empty place inside got bigger and bigger, until she was more empty than full.”

— Alan Gratz

8. “Michael, it’s terrible to say so, but sometimes you have to weigh the cost of one man’s life against the value of an entire operation.”

— Alan Gratz

9. “You Americans think you can fix everything by throwing money at it,” she added. “But your friend was right. This is like the Stone Age. Because no one will let us get past the Stone Age. Not when there is nothing but war. Do you understand? The best thing you can do to help us is leave us alone.”

— Alan Gratz

10. “You can live as a ghost, waiting for death to come, or you can dance.”

— Alan Gratz

11. “If no one saw them, no one could help them. And maybe the world needed to see what was really happening here.”

— Alan Gratz

12. “It was easy to see the worst of humanity, when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me that there was still good in the world. Even if I rarely saw it.”

— Alan Gratz

13. “Fear isn’t a weakness. Anyone who’s never been afraid is a fool.”

— Alan Gratz

14. “And without a dream, without ambition, what point was there to living?”

— Alan Gratz

15. “What were they thinking, those little German children? Did they see animals when they looked at us, or people? I wasn’t so sure myself anymore.”

— Alan Gratz

16. “Moving forward was scary. Sometimes you made mistakes. Sometimes you took the wrong path. And sometimes, even when you took the right path, things could go wrong. But Reshmina realized that she wanted – needed – to keep moving forward, no matter what.”

— Alan Gratz

17. “That means letting them read books that are too easy for them, or too hard for them. That means letting them read books that challenge them, or do nothing but entertain them. And yes, it means letting students read books with things in them we might disagree with and letting them make up their own minds about things, which is downright scary sometimes. But that’s what good education is all about.”

— Alan Gratz

18. “Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in.”

— Alan Gratz

19. “Ichariba choodee,” she said in Okinawan. It meant, “Now that we’ve met, we’re family.”

— Alan Gratz

20. “They lined the men up against a wall in the assembly yard. Rat-tat-tat-tat! The watch officer gunned them down himself, riddling their bodies with bullets.”

— Alan Gratz

21. “Josef followed the small group of kids through the raised doorway onto the bridge of the St. Louis. The bridge was a narrow, curving room that stretched from one side of the ship to the other. Bright sunlight streamed in through two dozen windows, offering a panoramic view of the vast blue-green Atlantic and wispy white clouds. Throughout the wood-decked room were metal benches with maps and rulers on them, and the walls were dotted with mysterious gauges and meters made of shining brass.”

— Alan Gratz

22. “We’re a team,” his dad repeated. “That’s what we’ve always said. This is how we survive, right? Together. It’s you and me against the world. But you shut me out on this one. And you let down the team.”

— Alan Gratz

23. “None of the boys were studying for the math test we had today, because none of them cared.”

— Alan Gratz

24. “No. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Lito said, looking up into the red-tinged clouds. “A storm is coming.”

— Alan Gratz

25. “There was no letter in the Jewish stars though. No matter where we had come from, we had no country. We were only Jews.”

— Alan Gratz

26. “Then, after you have killed as many Americans as you can,” Sano added, “you are to use the other grenade to kill yourself.”

— Alan Gratz

27. “If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them. But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did.”

— Alan Gratz

28. “That’s what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did.”

— Alan Gratz

29. “How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?”

— Alan Gratz

30. “A real coward would have run away and never looked back. Fear isn’t a weakness. Anybody who’s never been afraid is a fool.”

— Alan Gratz

31. “Little Mariano was at home, getting fat.”

— Alan Gratz

32. “Mr. Pilkey smiled. “Well, I wish they were on the shelves, where everybody could read them,” he said. “I think it’s important that libraries be a place where you can find all kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, serious ones. Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it’s valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.”

— Alan Gratz

33. “People didn’t just hand you their secrets. You had to go hunting for them.”

— Alan Gratz

34. “Because that’s what Nazi Germany was: the bully who found your most painful wound and poked at it with a stick.”

— Alan Gratz

35. “How you frame a photo says everything about the story you’re trying to tell.”

— Alan Gratz

36. “Maybe, Reshmina thought, they wouldn’t fight at all. Maybe they would spend their time doing something else instead, like building factories and schools and hospitals.”

— Alan Gratz

37. “This is it! Stay low, don’t bunch up, and run like hell!”

— Alan Gratz

38. “Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can’t make you into a bad person.”

— Alan Gratz

39. “Maybe Horst really believed all that “might makes right” malarkey. Maybe he didn’t like an Irish boy showing up the German “master race.” Or maybe he was just a bleeding maggot.”

— Alan Gratz

40. “Sergeant Meredith was the one who’d taught him how to survive. Sergeant Meredith was the one who’d given him his nickname. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had listened when Ray had argued for the Okinawans. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had taught Ray how to grieve for the death of a soldier.”

— Alan Gratz

41. “So, you’re English?” Fritz asked. I bristled at the insult.”

— Alan Gratz

42. “What story does the picture tell?” Lieutenant Tanaka had said to Hideki. “That’s what I’m always asking myself. Not just what’s happening in the photograph I take, but what happened before it was taken, and what will happen afterward. How you frame a photo says everything about the story you’re trying to tell.”

— Alan Gratz

43. “Germany surrendered. Hitler committed suicide. The Nazis are through.”

— Alan Gratz

44. “But this is – this is incredible!” Goldsmit stopped in an empty hallway next to a table with a vase full of edelweiss flowers. “Switzerland is neutral!” “Do you think the Nazis care?” I asked him.”

— Alan Gratz