Top 70 Trenton Lee Stewart Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Everything is as it should be.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

2. “Every great thinker keeps a journal, you know.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

3. “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

4. “Remember the White Knight.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

5. “You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn’t depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

6. “Rules and school are tools for fools! I don’t give two mules for rules.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

7. “Is this what family is like: the feeling that everyone’s connected, that with one piece missing, the whole thing’s broken?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

8. “It’s natural that you feel as you do, Reynie. There is much more to the world than most children – indeed, most adults – ever see or know. And where most people see mirrors, you, my friend, see windows. By which I mean there is always something beyond the glass.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

9. “I think when I started to write The Mysterious Benedict Society that I had that kind of thing in mind – the notion of having to be able to solve puzzles and riddles because enormous stakes rode upon your ability to do that.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

10. “She was a thin woman in a mustard-yellow suit, with a yellowish complexion, short-cropped rusty red hair, and a stiff posture. She reminded Reynie of a giant walking pencil.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

11. “The missing aren’t missing, they’re only departed.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

12. “What is life without laughter?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

13. “The gym is always open, except when it’s closed.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

14. “And I realize there’s no shortage of wickedness in the world,” said Mr. Benedict, with a significant look at Reynie, “but is it not heartening to know that so many are willing to fight for the good?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

15. “She announced her age right away, for children consider their ages every bit as important as their names.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

16. “In other words, you are our last possible hope. You are our only hope.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

17. “Daddy, will you take me to the mill, again?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

18. “Things are much more pleasant when you stop being angry.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

19. “I was always interested in the possibility maybe of finding my way into a big adventure.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

20. “It’s not going to be over until we say so.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

21. “Mr. Furrow jerked a thumb toward the mule in the back of the barn. “Rabbit’ll kill anything comes near his carrot if he hasn’t done with it. And he’ll kick you if you make him go too fast in the field. I’d whip him, but he’s so old a whipping might kill him, and he’s our last and only mule. So we just keep away from his carrot and we keep it slow. That’s the rules with Rabbit.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

22. “It’s not going to be over,” Kate said firmly, “until we say so.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

23. “One problem with being a leader, is that even among your friends you are alone, for it is you – and you alone – to whom the others look for final guidance.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

24. “Grow the lawn and mow the lawn always keep the TV on, brush your teeth and kill the germs, poison apples, poison worms.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

25. “For every exit, there is also an entrance.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

26. “The ocean was the greatest secret keeper of all. Some of its secrets, like the hidden shoals, could be discovered, but most would never be known. Thousands upon thousands might be revealed, yet there would always be more that remained hidden. The ocean was probably the most mysterious thing in the world, Reuben thought, except for a person.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

27. “No one seems to realize how much we are driven by FEAR, the essential component of human personality. Everything else – from ambition to love to despair – derives in some way from this single powerful emotion.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

28. “They stared out their window at night enough to know where the darkest shadows lay, and it was to the darkest shadows they kept.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

29. “I can’t say for sure, because I have no experience, but – well, is this what family is like? The feeling that everyone’s connected, that with one piece missing the whole thing’s broken?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

30. “Children are capable of such open rudeness.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

31. “For it is a curious fact about secret meetings that a bond almost always forms among the participants, a bond that can feel both mysterious and powerful.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

32. “There are empty rooms, and then there are rooms that feel crowded, corner to corner, with absence.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

33. “Books had been her means of escape; now they would be her refuge.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

34. “It would be years before it was operating the way a proper city should – which is to say, messily, but more or less freely and honestly, with its citizens accountable to one another and to those they’ve chosen to represent them, rather than to entities, spectral or otherwise, whose own interests are not in the interest of the people.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

35. “You know what i like about buttons? They’re very small things that hold bigger things together. Awfully important, buttons – little but strong.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

36. “You are the smartest children i know. You just don’t beleive it.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

37. “It was occurring to Reuben that people, especially adults, are rather quick to dismiss small mysteries, to assume that they have simply misunderstood or failed to observe something, and to go on about their business.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

38. “And when I do crave privacy, I have only to flip the “Closed” sign on my shop door until I’m feeling sociable again. Everyone should have such signs on their doors, don’t you think?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

39. “It just supports my personal opinion that he’s a wacko.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

40. “In his mind’s eye, he saw his dream of a new life drifting away like a lost balloon. And for some time he sat there, hating to see it go. But then it was gone, and he began to invent a new dream, and he began to feel better.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

41. “If you like to tell stories and compose sentences, and if you work hard at being good at these things, then you are a writer even if you haven’t published anything.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

42. “With perfect clarity he remembered Reynie saying, “I need you here as a friend.” The effect of those words, and of all his friendships, had grown stronger and stronger, until – though he couldn’t say why he didn’t feel mixed up now – at the most desperate moment yet, he knew it to be true. There was bravery in him. It only had to be drawn out.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

43. “I’ve only just arrived, Kate. It may surprise you to learn that you were my top priority.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

44. “I miss those days, don’t you? I mean, except for the terrible parts.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

45. “Was it worse for him, Reynie wondered, to have felt loved and then rejected? Or was it worse to have always felt alone?”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

46. “At this, Constance sat down on a rock and covered her face. She seemed smaller than ever now – so small the harbor breeze might catch her up like a scrap of paper and carry her away, carry her into nowhere.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

47. “Jack just needed to play his cards right. What was it Penny had said? The Meyers would be incomparable poker players, if only they gambled. Well, Jack was gambling, all right. Reuben could only hope he was good enough.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

48. “Distracted by emotion, she was drying her eyes with a slice of bread.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

49. “There was a unique pleasure in knowing a friend so well, Reynie reflected, rather like sharing a secret code.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

50. “Indeed, confident assurances and promises of fortune, when whispered into the right ears, often serve as substitutes for thinking at all.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart