Top 40 Andrew Clements Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It is not good to have TOO MUCH of anything.”

— Andrew Clements

2. “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but don’t three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but don’t two negatives make a positive?”

— Andrew Clements

3. “I have my own story, and I love my story, but I know I can’t tell it alone, not now. Because stories have centers, but they don’t have edges. No boundaries.”

— Andrew Clements

4. “But fear doesn’t need doors and windows. It works from the inside.”

— Andrew Clements

5. “But of course, all of this is just a silly fad, and when you add an “e” to fad, you get fade. And I predict this fad will fade.”

— Andrew Clements

6. “I glance into the faces of all these people out for a Sunday stroll, but I’m not seeing eyes and noses and mouths. I’m seeing stories. Every person has a story. All the hopes and dreams. And fears. And secrets. In every face.”

— Andrew Clements

7. “In the school library there’s an old Book Week poster that says ‘Get Lost in a Book.’ Well, we do that. We lose ourselves in books for hours and hours – books about all kinds of people and tons of different places. Then we come back, and we bring things with us. When we get lost like that, I think we find all kinds of cool stuff.”

— Andrew Clements

8. “Change couldn’t be stopped... but people always had choices, didn’t they? Even if change was being forced on you... you still had a choice: You could either give up and accept someone else’s ideas about change, or you could fight for the kind of changes you believed in.”

— Andrew Clements

9. “All the kids loved lunchtime. But the awful part of lunch was the eating part – school food.”

— Andrew Clements

10. “Dave couldn’t remember the last time a grownup had apologized to him.”

— Andrew Clements

11. “Laketon Elementary School was in the middle of a medium-size town in the middle of New Jersey. There was a reason Dave was in the middle of his fourth hour of not talking, but this isn’t the time to tell about that. This is the time to tell what he figured out in the middle of his social studies class.”

— Andrew Clements

12. “That was the second thing – understanding what Mrs. Granger had said.”

— Andrew Clements

13. “There’s a strength in the way she carries herself, but she never seems to relax, never lets down her guard.”

— Andrew Clements

14. “Because books do that – they make us lose some ignorance, and lose some fear. And losing fear might mean losing some anger, too.”

— Andrew Clements

15. “I almost tell him that I’d never be able to do something like that, just take out my instrument and begin playing on a street corner. But it feels to personal. Yes, I’m shy, but why bring it to his attention? I’m too shy to talk about how shy I am.”

— Andrew Clements

16. “Alec had comfort books – stories so familiar that they made reading feel like coasting downhill on a bike, or water-skiing on a smooth lake.”

— Andrew Clements

17. “Like I said before, I’m ten now, so I’ve had some time to figure out some stuff.”

— Andrew Clements

18. “But Jordan’s violin was especially deadly. It screeched like a frightened owl. Mr. Graisha glared at her, snapping his baton up and down, side to side, fighting to keep all twenty-three students playing in unison. It was a losing battle. He glanced up at the clock and then waved both arms as if he needed to stop a freight train.”

— Andrew Clements

19. “He spotted Jill sitting about thirty feet away, face tipped toward the sun, her straight brown hair tucked behind one ear and slanted across her neck. And Ben decided that when her mouth wasn’t full of tuna salad, she was sort of pretty.”

— Andrew Clements

20. “Aha. The mom doesn’t know. She’s fishing. This next part has to be just right, or I’m blacklisted by the mother and hated by the daughter. The first would be an inconvenience; the second would be a tragedy.”

— Andrew Clements

21. “I am constantly telling my own story to myself, and these days that’s about all the narrative flow I can handle.”

— Andrew Clements

22. “I’m pretty smart, and I like being smart.”

— Andrew Clements

23. “Mrs. Byrne.” Mrs. Byrne smiled. “Hello, Nora. You look a little down. Hard day?” I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

— Andrew Clements

24. “But only one thought came to him – This is better than the best book I’ve ever read!”

— Andrew Clements

25. “Only once. She called, asked could we send her two thousand dollars – two thousand more than the four she already stole when she left.”

— Andrew Clements

26. “I just really like computers.”

— Andrew Clements

27. “David?” Dave had been home five minutes when he heard his mom come in the front door and call his name. He was upstairs. In the bathroom. She called again. “David, answer me!” To be more specific, Dave was sitting on the toilet. “DAVID! ANSWER ME!” Dave knew that tone of voice. He had to do something right away. So he reached over and banged on the inside of the bathroom door. It was the wrong move. His mom was up those front stairs and.”

— Andrew Clements

28. “Girls like the boys that they’re always mad at, or shoving, or turning their heads away from, or sticking their tongues out at. Never fails.”

— Andrew Clements

29. “The whole book stays put, right there all the time, always the same, with the words perfectly lined up one after another, waiting.”

— Andrew Clements

30. “Truth is, Dad, I don’t blame Judge Parker,” he said quietly. “I mouthed off pretty bad in court. He could’ve given me sixty days in jail, or even ninety. I’ve got no gripe with him. It was my own fault – all of it.”

— Andrew Clements

31. “So another thing I learn is that Sherlock Holmes always finds the right clue, and I don’t.”

— Andrew Clements

32. “But some kids, they have to prove they’re smart.”

— Andrew Clements

33. “After the war, and after he had been thanked by Congress and President George Washington himself, Captain Oakes got the idea of turning his huge warehouse into a school, a permanent contribution to the life of the town and the nation.”

— Andrew Clements

34. “And until you’re sure there’s a cage around a tiger, it’s pretty dumb to dangle meat in front of it. Right?”

— Andrew Clements

35. “It wasn’t that she couldn’t do the work. She just didn’t like doing it.”

— Andrew Clements

36. “And at that second, Greg felt like Maura’s smile had to be worth at least a million dollars.”

— Andrew Clements

37. “And that’s Jake Drake, Know-It-All.”

— Andrew Clements

38. “And it was the same with the Black Cauldron movie – the book was ten times better.”

— Andrew Clements

39. “Then he read the first sentence from the introduction: Without question this modern American dictionary is one of the most surprisingly complex and profound documents ever to be created, for it embodies unparalleled etymological detail, reflecting not only superb lexicographic scholarship, but also the dreams and speech and imaginative talents of millions of people over thousands of years – for every person who has ever spoken or written in English has had a hand in its making.”

— Andrew Clements

40. “But if the messiness makes me feel like this, then it’s worth it, right?”

— Andrew Clements

41. “Darkness is only light’s absence.”

— Andrew Clements