Top 50 Kimberly Brubaker Bradley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If I started letting myself feel afraid I would never be able to stop.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

2. “One step, I thought. One step at a time.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

3. “But what do I do with them?” Miss Smith said “I’ve never been around children.” “Feed them, bathe them, make sure they get plenty of sleep,” the doctor said. “They’re no more diffi cult than puppies, really.” He grinned.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

4. “It had been awful, but I hadn’t quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

5. “I wanted to say a lot of things, but, as usual, I didn’t have the words for the thoughts inside my head.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

6. “It was us, I thought. Jamie and me. We had fallen down a rabbit hole, fallen into Susan’s house, and nothing made sense, not at all, not anymore.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

7. “Then I did what I should have done to start with. I taught myself to walk.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

8. “Lady Thorton never went to boarding school. She seems to imagine it as a sort of jolly holiday.” Susan had gone to boarding school. “Was it?” “No,” Susan said. “Mind you, I didn’t hate it. But sometimes being in a group of girls is just as lonely as being alone.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

9. “After that it was easy. It was the most impossible thing I’d ever done, but it was also easy. I held on to Jamie, and I kept moving forward.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

10. “Sourpuss,” she said, laughing. “Would it kill you to be grateful?” Maybe. Who knew?”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

11. “Keep going,” Susan said. “The only way out of this is straight through.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

12. “People used to draw dragons on the edges of old maps. When the world hadn’t been fully explored, mapmakers imagined dragons living at the far ends.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

13. “Jamie sings like a squirrel.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

14. “I didn’t know what to do. Susan was temporary. My foot was permanent.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

15. “Victory,′ she said, ’means peace.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

16. “You can know things all you like, and someday you might believe them.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

17. “Love isn’t as rare as you think it is... You can love all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. Nor is love in any way dangerous.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

18. “You can know things all you like, but that doesn’t mean you believe them.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

19. “And even if it felt like Mam hated me, she had to love me, didn’t she? She had to love me, because she was my mam, and Susan was just somebody who got stuck taking care of Jamie and me because of the war.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

20. “But now, thinking back, it seemed a little silly to be unhappy about a dress when the pilots were dead. If I had it to do over, I would at least have learned their names.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

21. “You’re perfectly capable of learning. You mustn’t listen to people who don’t know you. Listen to what you know, yourself.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

22. “I don’t want to have to feel grateful,” I said. Susan smiled. “I understand,” she said. “Do it anyhow.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

23. “I shrugged. “There’s a war on.” “Yes,” she said, “and you’re winning it.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

24. “Fear and what you did with it were two separate things.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

25. “When we’d settled ourselves on the bed in Jamie’s room, he said quietly, “Mam was angry at everything too.” My head snapped up. “Because of me,” I said. “Because of my foot.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

26. “When Jamie had to use the toilet, soldiers passed him over their heads to the one at the end of the car, and back again when he was done.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

27. “My bad foot’s a long way from my brain.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

28. “What’s right and what’s permitted are sometimes different things.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

29. “Saying something stupid doesn’t make you stupid,” Susan said. ” Luckily for all of us.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

30. “But I’m used to him not being around, especially when I’m at school. I mostly didn’t live with him. So I don’t actually miss him even though I’m sorry that he’s dead. Sometimes I realize that for a few hours I’ve forgotten all about him. I think I miss the idea of him more than miss his real self. Does that make me a bad person? I’m afraid it does.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

31. “I stared at the paper. I said, “This isn’t reading. This is drawing.” “Writing,” she corrected. “It’s like buttons and hems. You’ve got to learn those before you can sew on the machine. You’ve got to know your letters before you can read.” I supposed so, but it was boring. When I said so she got up again and wrote something along the bottom of the paper. “What’s that?” I asked. “‘Ada is a curmudgeon,’” she replied. “Ada is a curmudgeon,” I copied at the end of my alphabet. It pleased me. After.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

32. “I shook my head. Bombs fell from the sky. Boys fell from trees. Anything might happen. Anytime.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

33. “Sometimes, Ada,” she said, “I get very tired of you setting the example for us all.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

34. “I stored this information in my head in the bulging file titled “Things I Wished I Didn’t Know.” It included what it felt like to walk on a clubfoot for ten years, and what it sounded like to have your mother say she never wanted to see you again.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

35. “I don’t want to just survive.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

36. “Sometimes you’ve got a story you need to find the courage to tell.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

37. “I’m tired of feeling ashamed. About my foot.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

38. “Somehow Christmas was making me feel jumpy inside. All this talk about being together and being happy and celebrating – it felt threatening. Like I shouldn’t be part of it. Like I wasn’t allowed. And Susan wanted me to be happy, which was scarier still.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

39. “I was glad, you know, to read the book. To know it didn’t only happen to me.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

40. “Mam had never been anything but angry. Even when she smiled, she always stayed angry inside. No sadness, no joy. Just anger.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

41. “She was wrong.” I shrugged. “I can say that,” I said. “It’s harder to believe it.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

42. “It was horrible how the hardest things could be the truth.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

43. “Potato picking was tedious, dirty, exhausting, and cold. I rather liked it.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

44. “Maggie ignored this. “I’ll be glad to come to the party. Home’s dreadful, you can’t imagine. I’ve never liked school, but now home’s worse. Mum’s in a funk all the time.” Every.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

45. “I wanted to talk to her when she hadn’t just been hit on the head. I wanted to know if she’d still like me when she wasn’t woozy.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

46. “Broken bones take a long time to heal. Why shouldn’t brains?”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

47. “When we’d settled ourselves on the bed in Jamie’s room, he said quietly, “Mam was angry at everything too.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

48. “I’ll come,” she said softly. “I will. It would be good to be among family again.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

49. “What if he’d had to be put down?”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

50. “That’s your map of the past. What’s in the map of your future?” I stared at her. “What do you want?” she persisted. I had no idea. When I’d first been evacuated I’d wanted to be like the girl riding the pony, racing the train. Now I was. Parts of me were still jumbled – but maybe that girl had been jumbled too. I’d only seen her from the outside.”

— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley