Top 70 Rebecca Stead Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I don’t know. I just feel stuck, like I’m afraid to take any steps, in case they’re the wrong ones.”

— Rebecca Stead

2. “Pajamas are good for the soul.”

— Rebecca Stead

3. “She’s called the secretary, but as far as I can tell she basically runs the school.”

— Rebecca Stead

4. “Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to.”

— Rebecca Stead

5. “Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.”

— Rebecca Stead

6. “There are days when everything changes, and this was one of those days.”

— Rebecca Stead

7. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

— Rebecca Stead

8. “I’m an old man, and she’s gone now. So don’t worry, okay?”

— Rebecca Stead

9. “Einstein says common sense is just habit of thought. It’s how we’re used to thinking about things, but a lot of the time it just gets in the way.”

— Rebecca Stead

10. “My grandfather used to say that everyone alive has already beaten the craziest odds, just being born. Like one in a trillion. Your parents could have had a million different kids, but they had you. And before that could happen, your parents had to be born themselves, and their parents had to be born.”

— Rebecca Stead

11. “Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it’s amazing, but if you’re standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it’s really hard to tell.”

— Rebecca Stead

12. “Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.”

— Rebecca Stead

13. “Life isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you make yourself, all the time.”

— Rebecca Stead

14. “Trying to forget really doesn’t work. In fact, it’s pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.”

— Rebecca Stead

15. “Who’s the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who’s horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?”

— Rebecca Stead

16. “I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you’re gone and there’s no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It’s all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.”

— Rebecca Stead

17. “The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it’s a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.”

— Rebecca Stead

18. “Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.”

— Rebecca Stead

19. “If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It’s one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we’ll never know what it is.”

— Rebecca Stead

20. “Belle surprised me. ‘Well, it’s simple to love someone,’ she said. ‘But it’s hard to know when you need to say it out loud.”

— Rebecca Stead

21. “Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.”

— Rebecca Stead

22. “Common sense is just a name for the way we’re used to thinking.”

— Rebecca Stead

23. “It’s crazy the things a person can pretend not to notice.”

— Rebecca Stead

24. “You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once.”

— Rebecca Stead

25. “But every person has to learn to accept what has happened in the past. Without bitterness. Or there is no point in continuing with life.”

— Rebecca Stead

26. “When she was eight years old, Bridget Barsamian woke up in a hospital, where a doctor told her she shouldn’t be alive. It’s possible that he was complimenting her heart’s determination to keep pumping when half her blood was still uptown on 114th Street, but more likely he was scolding her for roller-skating into traffic the way she had.”

— Rebecca Stead

27. “Many of the books on my list are, in my opinion, amazing. Some I didn’t like. But I give them all five stars, because stars make people – including me – happy.”

— Rebecca Stead

28. “Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore. She doesn’t mean that it’s a real veil. And it isn’t about magic, or some idea that maybe God is looking right at you, or an angel is sitting next to you, or anything like that. Mom doesn’t think in those ways. It’s just her way of saying that most of the time, people get distracted by little stuff and ignore the big stuff.”

— Rebecca Stead

29. “Let’s say everyone has nine thousand things about themselves,” Em had explained to Tab and Bridge in sixth grade, “and say two people fall in love because it seems like all their things match up. But what they don’t know is that only like a thousand of their things actually match up. My mom says most people who get married don’t even know those other eight thousand things about themselves yet. So it could happen to anyone.”

— Rebecca Stead

30. “Didn’t you ever have a father yourself? You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.′ So I figured it’s because I never had a father that I don’t want one now. A person can’t miss something she never had.”

— Rebecca Stead

31. “Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”

— Rebecca Stead

32. “Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you make yourself, all the time.”

— Rebecca Stead

33. “Mom’s always telling me to smile and hoping I’ll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.”

— Rebecca Stead

34. “But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there’s a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore.”

— Rebecca Stead

35. “I wish I could see what would have hapenned if I hadn’t told. You told me once that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two. So now there’s a universe in which I kept my mouth shut. But I can’t see what it looks like.”

— Rebecca Stead

36. “Like when that man was running down Broadway stark naked and we all had to eat in the cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.”

— Rebecca Stead

37. “People don’t want to think about it.’ ‘I can see why,’ I said. ‘It makes my head hurt.’ ‘Still, you did better than most people. You’re a pretty smart kid.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Gee, thanks.”

— Rebecca Stead

38. “Listening, you reflect that you are probably the worst person on the planet. But this is not exactly news.”

— Rebecca Stead

39. “Life was anything but fast, in your opinion. If it went any more slowly, time would probably start to run backward.”

— Rebecca Stead

40. “I think that when you don’t know, you should just wait until you do.”

— Rebecca Stead

41. “Thirteen broken bones and a punctured lung. You must have been put on this earth for a reason, little girl, to have survived.”

— Rebecca Stead

42. “People act like riddles are hard, but real life is harder. In real life, there are always more than two doors” -Sherm.”

— Rebecca Stead

43. “Bridge knew why she was here. It’s why we’re all here, she thought. Call it Mr. Partridge with his black-and-white cookies. Call it Em standing on that stage with her knees shaking but her voice strong. Call it Jamie looking awkward in the doorway of her bedroom after she’d had the mummy nightmare. Call it love.”

— Rebecca Stead

44. “Love is when you like someone so much that you can’t just call it “like,” so you have to call it “love.”

— Rebecca Stead

45. “I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?” -Sherm.”

— Rebecca Stead

46. “And if you’ve got a voice, you might as well use it, right?”

— Rebecca Stead

47. “Isn’t that the whole idea?’ I asked. ‘It’s supposed to stop them from being criminals!’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren’t even people anymore.”

— Rebecca Stead

48. “There was no black line separating Colorado from Utah. There was no black line between friendship and whatever might come next.”

— Rebecca Stead

49. “Why don’t you and Patrick actually talk to each other?” Tab said. Em looked up. “Are you demented? And say what?”

— Rebecca Stead

50. “Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with.”

— Rebecca Stead