Top 120 Katherine Applegate Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Not long ago, a little boy stood before my glass, tears streaming down his smooth red cheeks. “He must be the loneliest gorilla in the world,” he said, clutching his mother’s hand. At times like that, I wish humans could understand me the way I can understand them. It’s not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”

— Katherine Applegate

52. “And oh, god, how could so much regret and so much sweetness and so much sadness all be present in that single moment. I was already dead and missing my unlived life. I was already dead and Tobias was mourning. I tried to smile. For him.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

55. “Humans. Violent but peace-loving. Passionate but cerebral. Humane but cruel. Impulsive but calculating. Generous but selfish. And yet, somehow I knew that they represented the best hope of the galaxy.”

— Katherine Applegate

56. “I try to understand, but all I hear is a river of words, rushing and thundering and pushing me beneath the surface. Now and then a word I know darts up like a sparkling fish, but then it’s all dark moving water again.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

59. “But even though I draw the same things over and over again, I never get bored with my art. When I’m drawing, that’s all I think about. I don’t think about where I am, about yesterday or tomorrow. I just move my crayons across the paper.”

— Katherine Applegate

60. “Here’s the thing, Jackson. Life is messy. It’s complicated. It would be nice if life were always like this.” He drew an imaginary line that kept going up and up. “But life is actually a lot more like this.” He made a jiggly line that went up and down like a mountain range. “You just have to keep trying.”

— Katherine Applegate

61. “What bothered me most, though, was that I couldn’t fix anything. I couldn’t control anything. It was like driving a bumper car without a steering wheel. I kept getting slammed, and I just had to sit there and hold on tight.”

— Katherine Applegate

62. “The way I understand things, it’s like this. We live on a lonely ball called Earth, and humans have basically been throwing it against the wall for so long that the poor ol’ ball is falling apart.”

— Katherine Applegate

63. “My mom told me once that money problems sort of sneak up on you. She said it’s like catching a cold. At first you just have a tickle in your throat, and then you have a headache, and then maybe you’re coughing a little. The next thing you know, you have a pile of Kleenexes around your bed and you’re hacking your lungs up.”

— Katherine Applegate

64. “Anger only gets in the way.”

— Katherine Applegate

65. “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

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

— Katherine Applegate

67. “Death’s gruesome face taunts: soulless eyes, crimson grimace. I really hate clowns.”

— Katherine Applegate

68. “And that’s how we ended up discovering the evil horses that threatened all of humanity.”

— Katherine Applegate

69. “Maybe dreams aren’t in your head. Maybe dreams are memories of another universe.”

— Katherine Applegate

70. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there, but I promise to complain the entire time.”

— Katherine Applegate

71. “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

72. “I have been in my domain for nine thousand eight hundred and fifty-five days. Alone. For.”

— Katherine Applegate

73. “But everyone needs to hope.”

— Katherine Applegate

74. “Earth is the crossroads of every possible alien. We’re the McDonald’s next to the highway of the galaxy.”

— Katherine Applegate

75. “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

76. “Lesson Number One in Everworld: There’s them, and there’s us. And any day we can keep them from destroying us, that’s a victory.”

— Katherine Applegate

77. “It’s not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”

— Katherine Applegate

78. “I like not knowing everything. It makes things more interesting.”

— Katherine Applegate

79. “She said she sometimes wondered if maybe bats are better human beings than human beings are.”

— Katherine Applegate

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

— Katherine Applegate

81. “David, when it happens... when it happens, David, will you save me?”

— Katherine Applegate

82. “I’m not sure you understand. That box might be taking you to a place where there are other elephants,” I say. “A place with more room, and humans who care about you.” But even as I say these words, I remember with a shudder the last box I was in. “I don’t want a zoo,” Ruby says. “I want you and Bob and Julia. This is my home.” “No, Ruby,” I say. “This is your prison.”

— Katherine Applegate

83. “I think I’ve always been an artist. Even as a baby, still clinging to my mother, I had an artist’s eye. I saw shapes in the clouds, and sculptures in the tumbled stones at the bottom of a stream. I grabbed at colors – the crimson flower just out of reach, the ebony bird streaking past.”

— Katherine Applegate

84. “Imaginary friends are like books. We’re created, we’re enjoyed, we’re dog-eared and creased, and then we’re tucked away until we’re needed again.”

— Katherine Applegate

85. “You needed love to win at the game of music... I played of sadness. I played of loneliness. Despair. Love found and lost. I played of tragic misunderstanding and weary cynicism and defeat. I played of perseverance, endurance beyond all suffering. Endurance in the face of hopelessness, hope when even hope was a betrayal... And yet, though I played so much sadness, the music at the same time denied despair. How could anyone despair while music was being played?”

— Katherine Applegate

86. “Love is alcohol.”

— Katherine Applegate

87. “Ninety percent of the trouble in this world comes from guys who think they have something to prove.”

— Katherine Applegate

88. “I guess none of us will get through this without some terrible sin. This will be mine.”

— Katherine Applegate

89. “Old age,” she says, “is a powerful disguise.”

— Katherine Applegate

90. “I soon learned that humans can screech even louder than monkeys.”

— Katherine Applegate

91. “I’m picky. Not so much about looks, although even there I’m kind of picky. It’s more that I can’t pretend some guy is interesting when he’s not. If he’s immature, I’ll probably tell him so. Within five minutes of knowing him. And if he looks ridiculous dressed up like some wannabe, I’ll probably say that, too, or more likely just steer clear of him.”

— Katherine Applegate

92. “Human humour often consists of pretending to wish something does not really wish.”

— Katherine Applegate

93. “Maybe it’s easier to forgive others once you’ve learned how to forgive yourself.”

— Katherine Applegate

94. “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

95. “Salt! Salt! And grease! Greee-suh!”Ax.”

— Katherine Applegate

96. “Photosynthesize.”

— Katherine Applegate

97. “A first friend is a true gift, because forever after, your heart knows what’s possible.”

— Katherine Applegate

98. “When you’ve been through the worst with someone, you appreciate the best.”

— Katherine Applegate

99. “You are Bob, untamed and undaunted.”

— Katherine Applegate

100. “She seemed beautiful to me. Is that strange? I suppose it is. But there is a compelling beauty in the sight of someone seemingly so small and yet so dangerous.”

— Katherine Applegate