Katherine Paterson Quotes

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

A dream without a plan is just a wish

We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story.

February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.

It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do.

Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.

Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.

I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write.

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.

A library is a feast to which we are all invited.

...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.

Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate.

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.

Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough

I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.

I have been mocked by beauty, too. But it was the beauty which cost me nothing that in the end turned upon me.

Many people are angry when they make a mistake, but very few people have the sense to be sorry.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

We book people are always preaching about reading aloud to children, but unless you do, you can't realize how it enriches family life.

The children's book world has given me wonderful friendships and an unbelievably rich life.

Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.

I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.

What I really want to do is to write a hilarious farce.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.

Impressed. Lord. He had nearly drowned.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.