28 Beverly Cleary Quotes That Awaken Your Inner Child

beverly cleary portrait with book border
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It doesn't all have to be just a memory.

Ashley Ferraro

These Beverly Cleary Quotes Will Bring You Back To Better Days

Beverly Cleary is the writer of many widely successful children's books.

The tales that she wrote are adventurous and inspiring to kids everywhere. She makes reading fun and totally worthwhile. We've put together some of Cleary's quotes to bring back your childhood memories. Which ones make you feel some type of way?

Let the nostalgia set in with these quotes by Cleary. You might just be surprised at how difficult it is to escape your childhood. The sky is the limit!

Beverly Cleary Quotes To Bring Back Your Childhood

  • "She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next."

  • "If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell."

  • "Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood."

  • "If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it."

  • "Words were so puzzling. Present should mean a present just as attack should mean to stick tacks in people."

  • "She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it."

  • "Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?"

  • "Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work."

  • "Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language."

  • "I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house."

Nostalgic Beverly Cleary Quotes

  • "All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt...The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake."

  • "The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser."

  • "One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since."

  • "All knowledge is valuable to a librarian."

  • "I guess that's what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn't. But it is all right."

  • "That was the trouble with this house. A girl couldn't even carry on a telephone conversation with any privacy."

  • "And now I'm going to find out how to get a library started."

  • "Ralph really felt sorry for the boy, hampered as he was by his youth and his mother."

  • "If they had been riding in a car, she would have waited for him to go around and open the door for her, but riding in a truck is different."

  • "She would not have hurt the old man's feelings for anything in the world."

Beverly Cleary Quotes To Exercise Your Imagination

  • "If there's one thing I can't stand, its a cheeky mouse."

  • "Love isn't like a cup of sugar that gets used up."

  • "Well, she thought, I'm certainly bright. She had wanted to meet a new boy and when she finally did meet one she didn't even find out his name."

  • "Oh well, thought Jane, that's how men are. He's probably taking it for granted. She found it very pleasant to be taken for granted by Stan."

  • "Emily was lucky in many ways. She was lucky in the house she lived in, a house with three balconies, a cupola, banisters just right for sliding down, and the second bathtub in Yamhill County."

  • "Don't eat so noisily. My grandmother used to say, ‘A smack at the table is worth a smack on the bottom."

  • "They wiped his paws on a good bath towel whenever he came in with wet feet, because they had not been married long enough to have an old bath towel."

  • "Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language."

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