Top 120 Katherine Applegate Quotes (2026 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. “Besides, the more you listen, the more you learn.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

8. “Old age is a powerful disguise.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

12. “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

13. “Life changes, so you must hope.”

— Katherine Applegate

14. “My favorite color is rainbow.”

— Katherine Applegate

15. “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

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

22. “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

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

— Katherine Applegate

24. “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

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

30. “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

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

38. “Oh, the things I wanted to say to those two! I wanted to tell them that friendship doesn’t have to be hard. That sometimes we let the world make it hard.” -Red.”

— Katherine Applegate

39. “Days have a way of slipping past like raindrops in a river.”

— Katherine Applegate

40. “But everyone needs to hope.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

42. “I’ve never asked for a promise before, because promises are forever, and forever is an unusually long time.”

— Katherine Applegate

43. “I hear the fear and hope fighting in my voice.”

— Katherine Applegate

44. “But that’s how it is when you love life. And I could accept that if my time had come, it had come. After a life as fine as mine, who was I to complain?”

— Katherine Applegate

45. “Anger only gets in the way.”

— Katherine Applegate

46. “Everyone has parents. It’s unavoidable.”

— Katherine Applegate

47. “And right then I knew, the way you know that it’s going to rain long before the first drop splatters on your nose, that something was about to change.”

— Katherine Applegate

48. “I don’t know why people talk to me, but they often do. Perhaps it’s because they think I can’t understand them. Or perhaps it’s because I can’t talk back.”

— Katherine Applegate

49. “I’d broken the rule because I wanted something. I wanted to matter. I wanted to do something meaningful before I died.”

— Katherine Applegate

50. “She spoke about her family she’d lost. She spoke about her secret hopes and fears and longings. She had love to give, and no one to give it to.”

— Katherine Applegate