Kathryn Lasky
Never in a million years would I want to live at Versailles with Marie Antoinette or anybody else. I hate to tell you this but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream.Collection: Diet
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls.Collection: Famous
I think the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the greatest undertaking in American History. I think landing a man on the moon pales next to it.Collection: History
I hate to tell you this, but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream. It gave me the mental equivalent of one of those toothaches you get when you bite into something too sweet.Collection: Diet
I feel I was always daydreaming, and I was always distracted.
Whether you are a twelve-year-old princess or a twelve-year-old regular kid, you need to know you are loved and respected.
Manic depressive people often have incredible energy and a slightly skewed, but nonetheless valid, way of looking at things.
I have always been fascinated by paleontology and prehistoric people, and I've always thought that one of the most intriguing moments in human history was the birth of artistic imagination. I always loved those cave paintings.
I came from a home where everybody had a book.
With my husband, I have twice sailed across the Atlantic in a sailboat one third the length of the Mayflower. I know Atlantic gales inside and out. I endured one that lasted for three days with winds up to fifty knots.
I believe that reading widely is the best preparation for writing.
I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.
I think, first and foremost, Marie Antoinette was intellectually impoverished. She really had never been introduced to the notion of abstract thinking - of thinking at all in any profound way.
Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.
My mother was a great advocate of women's rights, a member of the League of Women's Voters and lifelong member of Planned Parenthood and an advocate of a woman's rights in terms of reproductive issues. She was also a founding member of Common Cause in the state of Indiana.
To me, the most important thing is to tell a good story. If I can do that, I think that enlightenment, respect of nature, etc. follows.
I loved to read, and if I could've been a professional reader, that's probably what I would've wanted to be!
I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.
I always wondered what it was like to be just a normal kid growing up in trying times or during a great moment in history.
In our community here in Boston, we have had a tremendous influx of Russian Jews and Haitians. We call these people immigrants. But they come for the same reasons that William Bradford and William Brewster and John Carver came.
It is not a happy lot being a princess in any country, but especially Japan in which every tiny aspect of one's life is governed by the most rigid rules of protocol.
In terms of the Japanese royal family, they were considered the direct descendants of a god. They are regarded as all-powerful and possessors of unimaginable wealth, and yet they are, more often than not, literally prisoners of tradition.
I was actually very hesitant to write about Marie Antoinette. She seemed at first glance - well, I cannot think of any other term - an airhead of the first degree.
I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.
I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. I think Charlize Theron would make a lovely Marie Antoinette.
I did not find that writing a diary with a lead male character differed in any essential way from writing one with a female character. They all had the same challenges in terms of attempting to establish an identity, coping with loneliness, friendships, relationships.
I think Sacajawea was caught in a series of tragic situations - her kidnapping as a child, her being passed from tribe to tribe, being sold into marriage. However, I never thought of her as a tragic figure. I do not think she was a victim in the way we think of tragic figures.
I am not saying that the Renaissance in any way was a feminist movement - hardly. But the arts flourished, and in more social settings as opposed to being confined to the church.
Mary Queen of Scots is the most 'normal' girl who became a queen that I have ever written about.
I am ashamed of anyone who has eyes and still can't see.Collection: Eye
A legend, Kludd, is a story that you begin to feel in your gizzard and then over time it becomes true in your heart. And perhaps makes you become a better owl.Collection: Heart
Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - TwilightCollection: Twilight
A spark can become a flame, a flame a fire.Collection: Fire
Cycling, cycling forever bear, wolf, caribou. When had it all started, where will it end? We are all part of one, from such simple beginnings and yet all so different. Yet one. One and again.Collection: Simple
Night is done, gone the moon, gone the stars From the skies. Fades the black of night Comes the morn with rosy light. Fold your wings, go to sleep, Rest your gizzards, Safe you'll be for the day. Glaux is nigh. Far away is first black, But it shall seep back Over field Over flower In the twilight hour. We are home in our tree. We are owls, we are free. As we go, this we know Glaux is nigh.Collection: Stars
She told them simply and directly that the meadow was a place of peace and beauty, where indeed if one came to it in a quiet manner, the animals would not be disturbed; for there are lovely birds, and squirrels and field mice, and sometimes deer.Collection: Animal
You must not think of time as a quantity, a period, a measure. Look at the sky," Gwynneth said. "The moon has now slipped away to another night, into another world. It was not the time it was here that you remember, Faolan, but rather the luminescence of the air, the blue shadows cast by the trees in its light. It was not the length of the time but the quality of the moon's light that you felt and remember." Gwynneth paused. "It is the value, the quality that lives on.Collection: Moon
Our lives are just spectacles. We are like dolls, in a sense, to be observed and played with - often with cruel and deceitful intentions - in an unreal world.Collection: Dolls
Words, as you well know, can be powerful. - DiggerCollection: Powerful
Blood hardly defines one's character. We are made by our actions, not our blood. - SorenCollection: Character
He didn't know what he wanted. He only knew what he didn't want.Collection: Want
Legends were not only for the desperate. Legends were for the brave. (Soren)Collection: Brave
One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)Collection: Lying
The tail of the comet slashed the dawn and in the red light of the rising sun, for a brief instant, it seemed as if the comet was bleeding across the sky.Collection: Light
What are emotions exactly?' Lutta asked. 'Silly feelings that get in the way of actions.Collection: Silly
Hush little owl, You're with Twi. I got the moves to get you by. Big bad crows. St. Aggie's scamps Ain't got nothin to show the champ. I'll pop a spiral With a twist, Do a three-sixty And scatter mist----Collection: Moving
We are the owls of the weather chaw. We take it blistering, We take it all. Roiling boiling gusts, We're the owls with the guts. For blizzards our gizzards Dr tremble with joy. An ice storm, a gale, how we love blinding hail. We fly forward and backward, Upside down and flat. Do we flinch? Do we wail? Do we skitter or scutter? No, we yarp one more pellet And fly straight for the gutter! Do we screech? Do we scream? Do we gurgle? Take pause? Not on your life! For we are the best Of the best of the chaws!Collection: Ice
Give me a hot coal glowing bright red, Give me an ember sizzling with heat, These are the jewels made from my beak. We fly between the flames and never get singed We plunge through the smoke and never cringe. The secrets of fire, its strange winds, its rages, We know it all as it rampages Through forests, through canyons, Up hillsides and down. We track it. We'll find it. Take coals by the pound. We'll yarp in the heart of the hottest flame Then bring back its coals an make them tame. For we are the colliers brave and beyond all We are the owls of the colliering chaw!Collection: Heart
My mother was a great advocate of womens rights, a member of the League of Womens Voters and lifelong member of Planned Parenthood and an advocate of a womans rights in terms of reproductive issues. She was also a founding member of Common Cause in the state of Indiana.Collection: Mother
To find one's special quality One must lead a life of deep humility. To serve in this way Never question but obey Is the blessing of St Aggie's charity. - The owls of St. AegoliusCollection: Humility