Top 30 Meg Shaffer Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Hate is a knife without a handle. You can’t cut something with it without cutting yourself.”

— Meg Shaffer

2. “There is nothing braver than a child asking for help.”

— Meg Shaffer

3. “I’m a kindergarten teacher. I can multitask like an octopus.”

— Meg Shaffer

4. “Don’t give up, Lucy. Always remember that the only wishes ever granted are the wishes of brave children who keep on wishing even when it seems no one is listening because someone always is. Someone like me. Keep wishing. I’m listening.”

— Meg Shaffer

5. “What’s a foot but not part of the body? Afoot, not a foot. As Sherlock Holmes once said, “The game is afoot.”

— Meg Shaffer

6. “Always be quiet when a heart is breaking.”

— Meg Shaffer

7. “I can’t buy time. No one in the world can buy time. All those wasted years of my life... I can’t buy them back. And if there was one thing I would buy if I could, it would be the time I wasted running from what I was afraid of instead of facing it.”

— Meg Shaffer

8. “God – or whoever is in charge of this planet – got drunk on the job one day and decided to give me the gift of writing. The way I see it, I have two choices. I can set that gift on a high shelf so it won’t get dinged up and nobody can make fun of me for playing with it.” He smiled until the crinkles at the corners of his eyes were deep enough to hide state secrets. “Or I can have fun with it and play with the gift I was given until the engine burns out and the wheels come off. I decided to play.”

— Meg Shaffer

9. “Hope is the thing with feathers,’ the lovely Miss Emily Dickinson once wrote. Well, if that’s the case, then a wish is the thing with black feathers.”

— Meg Shaffer

10. “Ah, but that’s how life is,” Jack said. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, they say, and they aren’t wrong. We only know the right thing to do after we’ve done the wrong one.”

— Meg Shaffer

11. “Then again, why not here? Why did France and Germany and all those places get to have fairytales but not West Virginia? Wild, West Virginia. Wonderful, West Virginia. Beautiful and dangerous and dark and strange West Virginia. Why didn’t they get to have magic here, where the hills rolled like ocean waves and the morning mist was as thick as the silence of a family keeping secrets.”

— Meg Shaffer

12. “And trust me, a lot of grown-ups are scared of their phones when they ring too.”

— Meg Shaffer

13. “They tell us taking care of children is the most important job you can do, and then they pay us like it’s the least important.”

— Meg Shaffer

14. “I’ve always believed that children should never have to worry about adults, that something’s gone very wrong when they do.”

— Meg Shaffer

15. “Ah, but that’s the most important challenge of them all,” Jack said as he set his mug aside on the fireplace mantel. “You can’t win until you face your fears. Until you face your fears, your fears are winning.”

— Meg Shaffer

16. “When you gotta scream, you gotta scream.”

— Meg Shaffer

17. “Lucy Heart, you are going to be fine. You are going to be even better than fine, you are going to be loved like you deserve to be loved. And you are going to have a very magical life. If you want it.”

— Meg Shaffer

18. “Dangerous things, wishes. Sometimes they come to you when you call. Sometimes they fly away after biting you.”

— Meg Shaffer

19. “Because only brave children know that wishing is never enough. You have to try to make your own wishes come true.”

— Meg Shaffer

20. “You kill an artist, you kill all their unmade art too. Why don’t people think about that before they hurt each other?”

— Meg Shaffer

21. “Sometimes the thing we want most in the world is the thing we’re most afraid of. And the thing we’re most afraid of is often the thing we most want.”

— Meg Shaffer

22. “Christopher is real though. He matters to me a billion times more than any book, any game. And I’m not going to tell him that he has to wait until he grows up to be happy. He is going to be happy now even if it kills me to make him happy.”

— Meg Shaffer

23. “Ask any question in an infinite universe, and the answer is yes. Always yes.”

— Meg Shaffer

24. “Did you know that the kids who grow up as the ‘favorites’ in families are usually more screwed up than the kids who aren’t the favorites? The first lesson we learn is that our parents’ love is conditional and that failure to perform means that they can take all that love away. We see it with our siblings, so we do everything we can to make sure that never happens to us. Fun, right? I learned that in therapy.”

— Meg Shaffer

25. “And that’s why the world has Holy Grails – not because the world needs Holy Grails but because the world needs heroes.”

— Meg Shaffer

26. “Who knew happiness was the best muse of all?”

— Meg Shaffer

27. “They didn’t have fairy tales in West Virginia. They were lucky to have a Target.”

— Meg Shaffer

28. “She kept her voice soft and low and gentle. Kids with hard lives deserved gentle words.”

— Meg Shaffer

29. “But I can show up. I can do that.”

— Meg Shaffer

30. “Another thing I learned in therapy?” Angie said. “The kids in dysfunctional families who act out and rebel are the ones who are the healthiest mentally. They’re the ones who see that something’s wrong. That’s why they act out, because they see the house is burning down, and they’re screaming for help. That was you.”

— Meg Shaffer

31. “Once, he’d loved the ocean. Loved seeing it every morning, every night. Seeing all its facets, all its faces. Not many people knew what the sea looked like in all seasons, under all phases of the moon. But he did. Now he knew the ocean was as dangerous as a sleeping volcano. At peace, it was magnificent. But when it wanted to, it could bring down kingdoms. Five years ago, it had brought down the small, strange kingdom of Clock Island.”

— Meg Shaffer

32. “I don’t know what’s worse, that he doesn’t remember I’m in love with him or that he doesn’t remember he was in love with me.”

— Meg Shaffer

33. “The kids in dysfunctional families who act out and rebel are the ones who are the healthiest mentally.”

— Meg Shaffer

34. “I might owe her an apology.” He tapped his chin. “She won’t get it, but I do owe her one.”

— Meg Shaffer