Top 120 Katherine Applegate Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Pain is life. Life is pain.”

— Katherine Applegate

2. “It is a great gift indeed to love who you are.”

— Katherine Applegate

3. “I like colorful tales with black beginnings and stormy middles and cloudless blue-sky endings. But any story will do.”

— Katherine Applegate

4. “Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.”

— Katherine Applegate

5. “Besides, the more you listen, the more you learn.”

— Katherine Applegate

6. “Old age is a powerful disguise.”

— Katherine Applegate

7. “With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”

— Katherine Applegate

8. “Her eyes hold the pale moon in them, the way a still pond holds stars.”

— Katherine Applegate

9. “Right now I would give all the yogurt raisins in all the world for a heart made of ice.”

— Katherine Applegate

10. “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.”

— Katherine Applegate

11. “Growing up gorilla is just like any other kind of growing up. You make mistakes. You play. You learn. You do it all over again.”

— Katherine Applegate

12. “There is beauty in stillness and grace in acceptance.”

— Katherine Applegate

13. “My favorite color is rainbow.”

— Katherine Applegate

14. “But sometimes things happen that aren’t so good. When they occur, I’ve learned that there’s not much you can do except stand tall and reach deep.”

— Katherine Applegate

15. “Everything ends eventually. I guess that’s what makes summer so intense, this feeling that it lasts for only a a short while and then it’s back to reality.”

— Katherine Applegate

16. “It’s hard to put into words. Gorillas are not complainers. We’re dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.”

— Katherine Applegate

17. “Life changes, so you must hope.”

— Katherine Applegate

18. “Human can surprise you sometimes. An unpredictable species, Homo sapiens.”

— Katherine Applegate

19. “Trees can’t tell jokes. But we can certainly tell stories. And if all you hear is the whisper of leaves, don’t worry. Most trees are introverts at heart.”

— Katherine Applegate

20. “Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troops of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do. Here in my domain there is no one to protect.”

— Katherine Applegate

21. “But hunger, like food, comes in many shapes and colors.”

— Katherine Applegate

22. “Trees have a rather complicated relationship with people, after all. One minute you’re hugging us. The next minute you’re turning us into tables and tongue depressors.”

— Katherine Applegate

23. “I just want to get on a table, dance on someone’s tater tots, and wait for the hall monitor to drag me away.”

— Katherine Applegate

24. “Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.”

— Katherine Applegate

25. “They think I’m too old to cause trouble. Old age is a powerful disguise.”

— Katherine Applegate

26. “Kek finds sun when the sky is dark.”

— Katherine Applegate

27. “Memories are precious,” Stella adds. “They help tell us who we are.”

— Katherine Applegate

28. “A good zoo is how humans make amends.”

— Katherine Applegate

29. “People don’t understand the word ruthless. They think it means ‘mean.’ It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”

— Katherine Applegate

30. “Humans. Sometimes they make chimps look smart.”

— Katherine Applegate

31. “Different languages, different food, different customs. That’s our neighborhood: wild and tangled and colorful. Like the best kind of garden.”

— Katherine Applegate

32. “Stella is a mountain. Next to her I am a rock, and Bob is a grain of sand.”

— Katherine Applegate

33. “I think that in many ways, just as forgiveness is impossible without love, sometimes love requires forgiveness for it to work, too.”

— Katherine Applegate

34. “Humans. Rats have bigger hearts. Roaches have kinder souls. Flies have-.”

— Katherine Applegate

35. “I always tell the truth, Stella replies. Although I sometimes confuse the facts.”

— Katherine Applegate

36. “You can’t have real pain without real love. You can’t feel grief and loss and hurt without real love. Love is the only way you can ever be really hurt deep down.”

— Katherine Applegate

37. “Hollows are proof that something bad can become something good with enough time and care and hope” -Red.”

— Katherine Applegate

38. “A hole can be as real and solid as a boulder or a tree.”

— Katherine Applegate

39. “Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade ship.”

— Katherine Applegate

40. “I was born in a place humans call central Africa, in a dense rain forest so beautiful, no crayons could ever do it justice.”

— Katherine Applegate

41. “Fun fact, Jackson. You can’t see sound waves, but you can hear music.”

— Katherine Applegate

42. “She is like a newborn sun, fresh with promise, the just beginning moments before the day fills like a bucket with good and bad, sweat and longing.”

— Katherine Applegate

43. “They pass their green paper, dry as old leaves and smelling of a thousand hands, back and forth and back again. They hunt frantically, stalking, pushing, grumbling. Then they leave, clutching bags filled with things – bright things, soft things, big things – but no matter how full the bags, they always come back for more.”

— Katherine Applegate

44. “Those are the stars that will guide my path home.”

— Katherine Applegate

45. “Making others feel safe is a fine way to spend your days.”

— Katherine Applegate

46. “If you’re not afraid, you’re a fool. If you are afraid, even scared to death, and keep your head? That is called courage.”

— Katherine Applegate

47. “Our stories don’t make their homes in heavy books. We hold our stories in our songs.”

— Katherine Applegate

48. “Meantime, I was going to enjoy the magic while I could.”

— Katherine Applegate

49. “Mosquitoes are the greatest mass murderers on planet Earth.”

— Katherine Applegate

50. “It’s OAT-freaking-MEAL!”

— Katherine Applegate