Roger Rosenblatt Quotes

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

The problem with death is absence

The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self - regulation, and we might return it by minding our own business.

Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb.

If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something.

A library should be like a pair of open arms.

The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.

Friends are lights in winter; the older the friend, the brighter the light.

The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights; the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.

Only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved

Come September, children return to school, grownups to work, and the brain to the head.

Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.

Time can be such a menace to a man. By this age do that; by that age do better.

Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: 'Your life counts for something.' In no other subject that I know of is that message given.

Remote control. Ingenious contradiction of terms. Fits like a handshake. Aims like a gun.

When you have the goods, you don't need to dress up what you're writing.

There is nothing like a man for bringing out the animal in an animal.

Blame is especially useful in situations in which there is no apparent villain-those moments that prove, despite our advancement of learning, how susceptible we are to high winds and wet roads.

Live in the past, but don't remember too much.

A five-year old is in a pretty good position to assess who is beautiful and who is not. Removed from the confusions of sexuality, he or she can judge a face as a face.

If a man spends enough time in a library, he may actually change his mind. I have seen it happen.

Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die "and decrease the surplus population." Scrooge may not have had God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.

Whatever you think matters - doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life.

What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.

If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.

One of the very important things that have to be learned around the time dying becomes a real prospect is to recognize those occasions when we have been useful in the world.

Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.