Matthew Tobin Anderson
Matthew Tobin Anderson
Matthew Tobin Anderson, known as M.T. Andersonis an American writer of children's books that range from picture books to young-adult novels. He won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2006 for The Pox Party, the first of two "Octavian Nothing" books, which are historical novels set in Revolution-era Boston. Anderson is known for using wit and sarcasm in his stories, as well as advocating that young adults are capable of mature comprehension...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 November 1968
CountryUnited States of America
The sky was as blue as a stupid postcard, and the islands were as green as islands.
it's like a squid in love with the sky.
We are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.
I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.” The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.” Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.” Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.” I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.” “Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.
…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.
Image of a girl holding a blaster to a twin’s temple. “Remember, bi***. You can’t spell ‘danger’ without DNA.” Blam.
And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.
We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.
At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born. And I am turning into a vampire.
Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.
There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.
...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered.
We must curb ourfury, and allow sadness to diminish, and speak our stories with coolness and deliberation.