Top 40 Christopher Paul Curtis Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Work at your craft, write daily, and follow your dreams because dreams do come true.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

2. “There comes a time when you’re losing a fight that it just doesn’t make sense to keep on fighting. It’s not that you’re being a quitter, it’s just that you’ve got the sense to know when enough is enough.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

3. “Write for the love of writing and you can’t go wrong.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

4. “I often tell young people that as a writer you are very powerful, that you can make absolutely anything happen.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

5. “Things aren’t ever what they seem to be when you first look at them. What’s important is that you keep your mind wide open and try to understand what’s going on from a lot of different angles.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

6. “Just like when there’s a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there’s a time when you know you’ve got to fight.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

7. “A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It’s a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that’s you.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

8. “The big steel wheels creaked a couple times, then started moving.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

9. “No sir, I don’t know why, but my eyes don’t cry no more.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

10. “But you just gotta understand that that’s the way it is and keep on steppin’.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

11. “Writing has always been a sanctuary or a refuge for me, any time I’m stressed or anxious or worried I find that a couple of hours expressing myself by writing always seems to have a calming effect on me.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

12. “A Mile A Minute.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

13. “I do think it is important to look at the writing as a job though and to commit to it like you’d have to commit to a regular nine-to-five.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

14. “Besides the soothing effect it has, I think my favorite part of writing is being able to use my imagination and creativity to make new ideas and people and situations come to life.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

15. “Having a little pee in your pants had to be better than being dinner for some redneck.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

16. “I’m the same age as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

17. “There’s a thin, blurry line between humor and tragedy.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

18. “Wow. Who would want a fish for a pet when they could have a turtle?!”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

19. “Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don’t Know – Especially When You’re Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

20. “I’m sure there’s some philosophy that says one of the best ways to deal with any of your problems is to take a deep breath and step away from them for a while, writing does this for me.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

21. “As the writer you are the puppet-master and can control everything. Believe me, that is a whole lot of fun because it ain’t something that’s going to be happening very often in real life!”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

22. “If you didn’t have a real good imagination you’d probably think those noises were the sounds of some kid blowing a horn for the first time, but I knew better than that. I could tell those were the squeaks and squawks of one door closing and another one opening.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

23. “Byron says he won’t go there. He give Kenny and Joey a story about “Wool Pooh,” the supposed evil twin of Winnie-the-Pooh. They believe him, but Kenny still wants to go.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

24. “You can tell you’re reading a really good book when you forget all about everything else and know you’ll die if you get to at least the end of the chapter.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

25. “But don’t ever call her ex-boyfriends by his name.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

26. “There was going to be a battle something like if Godzilla met King Kong, or if Frankenstein met Dracula, or like when champion wrestler Bobo Brazil meets the Sheik!”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

27. “God is great, God is good, Let us thank him For our food. Amen.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

28. “The floor went completely black when Mr. Amos pulled the door shut. I couldn’t see it now, but I’d rememorized the exact shape the stain was in. The padlock snapped shut with the loudest click I’d ever heard.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

29. “Dad was in the United Auto Workers at work so seniority was real important in our house.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

30. “But I was kind of surprised that God would send a saver to me in such raggedy clothes.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

31. “Every once in a while, Momma would make me go to Sunday school with Joey. Even though it was just a bunch of singing and coloring in coloring books and listening to Mrs. Davidson, I had learned one thing. I learned about getting saved. I learned how someone could come to you when you were feeling real, real bad and could take all of your problems away and make you feel better. I learned that the person who saved you, your personal saver, was sent by God to protect you and to help you out.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

32. “We were all standing in line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers came in and tap-tap-tap.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

33. “Doggone it all!”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

34. “I write because I love to. I’m very, very fortunate to have found something that I love doing that also earns my living. But to be honest, I’d write even if I weren’t being paid to.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

35. “His chin looked as though a farsighted person had attempted to sew two thickly cut pieces of bacon together in a dark room.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

36. “My dinosaurs weren’t even in their graves for three hours before someone rolled their rocks away. Maybe it was a lot easier for a bunch of angels to get a million dinosaurs to heaven than it was to get the saver of the whole world there, but I wished they’d given me a couple more hours.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

37. “It’s times like this when someone is talking to you like you are a grown-up that you have to be careful not to pick your nose or dig your drawers out of your butt.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

38. “It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Times are hard. Ten-year-old Bud is a motherless boy on the run, and his momma never told him who his father was. But she left a clue: posters of Herman.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

39. “Shucks, this is one of the bad things about talking to librarians, I asked one question and already she has us digging through three different books.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis

40. “Something like hearing that your grandmother got her whole body pulled through the wringer on a washing machine, or something like hearing about a horse slipping on the ice and landing on some kid you went to school with.”

— Christopher Paul Curtis