Blue Balliett Quotes

The greatest art belongs to the world. Do not be intimidated by the experts. Trust your instincts. Do not be afraid to go against what you were taught, or what you were told to see or believe. Every person, every set of eyes, has the right to the truth.

— Blue Balliett

What was a foreigner, anyway? Is the place you're born the only place you really belong? At what point do you stop being from "away" and start being from "here"?

— Blue Balliett

“Passing time isn't a steady thing. People try to measure it, but some days seem to have years packed into them, and others pass in the blink of an eye. Some days matter, and others don't.”

— Blue Balliett

Every book is a box of ideas.

— Blue Balliett

You will come to agree with me.

— Blue Balliett

“The wind came up and changed us all..”

— Blue Balliett

“I don't know how anyone else sees the world and no one else sees the world exactly how I see the world! We each see in our own, unique way.”

— Blue Balliett

The more you search the more you find.

— Blue Balliett

Yes, the wind came up
" Mrs. Sharpe began. She paused.
"And changed us all," Petra said softly.

— Blue Balliett

“Not really a quote but here is is
The setting is the start.The story hangs from that hook,and the characters move slowly around one another.
Each piece has its own shape and size.
The characters think they see the wires that connect them.
But that isn't possible.
Or is it?
Who makes the rules?”

— Blue Balliett

I love the way a list makes a big hodgepodge of things simmer down and behave.

— Blue Balliett

“Grams calls them "worry crumbs" those leftover bits of an uncomfortable idea. She fixes worry crumbs with sayings and she has one to fit almost any size mess or confusion.”

— Blue Balliett

“Perhaps Calder's secret lies in the idea that each mobile is, truly, a metaphor for the experience of living, for the interconnected movement of separate elements that make up a life. Each mobile tells us to stop, to wonder, to wonder some more, and to celebrate.”

— Blue Balliett

“Picasso said that art is a lie, but a lie that tells the truth ... Calder wondered what Picasso had meant. Was it that art wasn't exactly the real world, but it said something real?”

— Blue Balliett

“In the summer, it's short greens and tall greens and sometimes a smudge of other colors. In winter, it's squinty white,and sometimes deep when it looks flat. In early spring and late fall, the town gets brown and black, like an old photograph.”

— Blue Balliett

“My grandpa and grandma aren't like me. They're more like sheets drying outside on a breezy day
they change directions without any fuss. But me, if I was a sheet and the wind blew me, I'd never stop flapping.”

— Blue Balliett

“What was a little dark, anyway? Just no sun, [Petra] reminded herself as her sneakers pounded toward the opening. Just dark, all three fine, she whispered to herself again and again, spinning the words outward into a mobile in her mind. They floated into dark-three, all-just-fine and then into all-fine, dark-just-three.”

— Blue Balliett

Reading is a tool no one can take away. A million bad things may happen in life and it'll still be with you, like a flashlight that never needs a battary. Reading can offer a crack of light on the blackest of nights.

— Blue Balliett

“Now Early realized that a light had gone out, and”

— Blue Balliett

“Well?" the man shouted. "With or against?" No one replied, and”

— Blue Balliett