Top 140 Louis Sachar Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You have only one life, make the most of it.”

— Louis Sachar

2. “It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”

— Louis Sachar

3. “There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.”

— Louis Sachar

4. “You’re responsible for yourself. You messed up your life, and it’s up to you to fix it. No one else is going to do it for you – for any of you.”

— Louis Sachar

Featured in: Accountability Quotes, Life is Hard Quotes, Common Sense Quotes

5. “You need a reason to be sad. You don’t need a reason to be happy.”

— Louis Sachar

6. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Nothing in life is easy. But that’s no reason to give up. You’ll be surprised what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it. After all, you only have one life, so you should try to make the most of it.”

— Louis Sachar

7. “It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather!”

— Louis Sachar

8. “She sells seashells by the seashore.”

— Louis Sachar

9. “Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away. The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.”

— Louis Sachar

10. “I’m not stupid. I know everybody thinks I am. I just don’t like answering their questions.”

— Louis Sachar

11. “Give me a dollar or I’ll spit on you.”

— Louis Sachar

12. “If only, if only, the moon speaks no reply; Reflecting the sun and all that’s gone by. Be strong my weary wolf, turn around boldly. Fly high, my baby bird, My angel, my only.”

— Louis Sachar

13. “The time you quit learning is the time to quit playing.”

— Louis Sachar

14. “If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy.”

— Louis Sachar

15. “I may have ruined my life, but at least I got to eat some really good Chinese food.”

— Louis Sachar

16. “Warning: Do not read this story right after eating. In fact, don’t read it right before eating either. In fact, just to be safe, don’t read this story if you’re ever planning to eat again.”

— Louis Sachar

17. “I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.”

— Louis Sachar

18. “The bigger the storm, the brighter the rainbow.”

— Louis Sachar

19. “Nothing in life is easy. But that’s no reason to give up.”

— Louis Sachar

20. “The impossible is more believable than the highly improbable.”

— Louis Sachar

21. “You may have done some bad things, but that doesn’t mean you’re a bad kid.”

— Louis Sachar

22. “When you spend your whole life living in a hole,” he said, “the only way you can go is up.”

— Louis Sachar

23. “Stanley spent more time pushing the wheelbarrow than digging, because he was such a slow digger. He carted away the excess dirt and dumped it into previously dug holes. He was careful not to dump any of it in the hole where the gold tube was actually found.”

— Louis Sachar

24. “Everyone in his family had always liked the fact that “Stanley Yelnats” was spelled the same frontward and backward. So they kept naming their sons Stanley. Stanley was an only child, as was every other Stanley Yelnats before him.”

— Louis Sachar

25. “Nothing in life is easy. But that’s no reason to give up. you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it.”

— Louis Sachar

26. “You make the decision: Whom did God punish?”

— Louis Sachar

27. “What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don’t seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don’t seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I’m very proud.”

— Louis Sachar

28. “Not everyone is as nice as us.”

— Louis Sachar

29. “I didn’t become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don’t just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.”

— Louis Sachar

30. “It’s – I write the books and let the market find who reads it. I guess a young adult is anywhere from ten to fifteen.”

— Louis Sachar

31. “Rattlesnakes would be a lot more dangerous if they didn’t have the rattle.”

— Louis Sachar

32. “Not counting ‘Small Steps,’ I think ‘Holes’ is my best book, in terms of plot, and setting, and the way the story revealed itself. It hasn’t changed my life, other than that I have more money than I did before I wrote it. I’m still too close to ‘Small Steps’ to compare it to ‘Holes.’”

— Louis Sachar

33. “Well, the first hole’s the hardest,” Magnet said.”

— Louis Sachar

34. “The bark on the tree was just a little softer.”

— Louis Sachar

35. “She said his life would be like walking upstream in a rushing river. The secret was to take small steps and just keep moving forward. If he tried to take too big a step, the current would knock him off his feet and carry him back downstream.”

— Louis Sachar

36. “Each beat told him he was still alive, at least for one more second.”

— Louis Sachar

37. “There was something special about being in a strange place, all alone in a mass of people even if you had just screwed up your life, or perhaps especially if you had just screwed up your life.”

— Louis Sachar

38. “Stanley took a shower – if you could call it that, ate dinner – if you could call it that, and went to bed – if you could call his smelly and scratchy cot a bed.”

— Louis Sachar

39. “There were stairs that led down to the basement, too, but nobody ever went down there. There were dead rats living in the basement.”

— Louis Sachar

40. “He could hardly lift his spoon during breakfast, and then he was out on the lake, his spoon soon replaced by a shovel.”

— Louis Sachar

41. “Suck your toes. That’s what I do,” said Sharie. But Leslie’s foot wouldn’t reach her mouth. “Well, that’s all toes are good for,” said Sharie. She put her foot in her mouth and went to sleep. “No,” thought Leslie. “They must be good for something.”

— Louis Sachar

42. “In a way, it made him sad. He couldn’t help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing.”

— Louis Sachar

43. “Love and a Dead Rat.”

— Louis Sachar

44. “After all, if you’re not scared, then there’s nothing to be brave about, is there?”

— Louis Sachar

45. “I’m no good at describing my books. ‘Holes’ has been out now for seven years, and I still can’t come up with a good answer when asked what that book is about.”

— Louis Sachar

46. “The reader is probably asking: Why would anyone go to Camp Green Lake? Most campers weren’t given a choice. Camp Green Lake is a camp for bad boys. If you.”

— Louis Sachar

47. “You can’t let anybody else tell you what your choices are. Sometimes they won’t give you the right choice.”

— Louis Sachar

48. “The Warden owns the shade.“-Chapter 1.5.”

— Louis Sachar

49. “I have been to the White House,” Jeff admitted. “If you want, I’ll tell you about it.” Bradley thought a moment, then said, “Give me a dollar or I’ll spit on you.” 2.”

— Louis Sachar

50. “Stanley wondered if this was how a condemned man felt on his way to the electric chair – appreciating all of the good things in life for the last time.”

— Louis Sachar