The best quotes in Kate DiCamillo’s ‘Because of Winn-Dixie’ are wrapped around the subject matters of friendship, family love and acceptance, maturity, and all whatnot. There are some really great life lessons buried in these quotes, and it would be such a shame that readers missed any of them. Some of the best quotes will be talked about here.

Lesson for the Judgmental

You can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.

Kate DiCamillo takes the liberty from her book ‘Because of Winn-Dixie’ to pass down helpful advice to young people urging them to avoid being judgmental of anyone. She draws cues from several scenes, particularly the one where Opal has a heart-to-heart with Gloria Dump.

Opal is wary about continuing to work for Otis after finding out he’s been to jail in the past. She also worries that her father, the preacher, will be mad if he finds out. With such thoughts troubling her mind, Opal decides to seek advice from the old Gloria Dump and is told that everyone has a bad past, but that the most important thing is that they learned from it and become better persons in the present.

Everyone Yearns For a Companion

Winn-Dixie looked up at me and wagged his tail. And I have to admit, he stunk. Bad. He was an ugly dog, but already, I loved him with all my heart.

Opal naturally is a conversational girl but from the start, readers get that she is a little unfriendly and antisocial. What she is looking for all along is someone who understands her, someone she can clique with – and seeing Winn-Dixie, from the first encounter at the grocery store, Opal immediately knows she has seen a friend, a companion, and a playmate – even though he’s only a dog.

Parental love

Before I was born, he was a missionary in India and that is how I got my first name. But he calls me by my second name, Opal, because that was his mother’s name. And he loved her a lot.

This excerpt shows the extent to which the preacher loves Opal, despite him not having the courage to show it. Parental love is one of the strongest forms of love and the case is not different for Opal and the preacher – even though the disappearance of mama (Opal’s mother) creates a huge vacuum between the father and daughter’s relationship.

The preacher choosing to refer to his daughter by the name Opal, the same name as his own mother, goes to show the deepness of his fatherly love for her, but he doesn’t really show this until later in the book during the heat of the climax.

No One Really Wants to Be Alone

If me and the preacher went off and left him by himself in the trailer, he pulled all the cushions off the couch and all the toilet paper off the roll.

It’s a common thing for characters to occasionally want to be left alone to figure things out for themselves, but the reality of Kate DiCamillo’s ‘Because of Winn-Dixie’ includes characters having increased concerns about being left alone.

Winn-Dixie is perhaps the one character that shows this very much as he doesn’t, in any way, tolerate being kept away from the preacher and Opal, especially Opal. Because he is an animal, he would destroy things and that’s how he knows to react to being alone.

The rest of the characters also hated being alone but unlike Winn-Dixie’s violent reaction in such situations, readers see human characters react to this feeling in the forms of sadness, mood swings, and or denial. Opal, the preacher, Amanda, and Gloria Dump – all have moments they subtly react to being alone.

Friends Bring Fortune

Just about everything that happened to me that summer happened because of Winn-Dixie. For instance, without him, I would blender have met Gloria Dump.

Opal wouldn’t have had nearly the happy life that she currently has if she didn’t cross paths with Winn-Dixie last summer, and she’s not shy to point that out. One friend comes into her life and transforms it for her in ways that she never thought possible. She becomes open and understanding makes more great friends, learns to let go of her unhealthy past, and starts to make the most of life from what’s given her.

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