Katherine Paterson Quotes

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

I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.

Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.

I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how.

What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good. We have no idea what the next ten years, much less the next fifty years, will demand of the coming generation. What we do know is that unless we have a people prepared and eager to meet those crises creatively and compassionately, there is not much hope for this poor old planet of ours.

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

Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.

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

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

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

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. And somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone.

There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

...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.

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.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

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

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

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

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

The work reveals the creator - and as our universe in its vastness, its orderliness, its exquisite detail, tells us something of the One who made it, so a work of fiction, for better or worse, will reveal the writer.

We can read the paper or current magazines and learn about national and world events, think about controversial subjects, learn how to disagree respectfully, and how, finally, to act on our convictions. We can read for pure delight, and if we do this as a family or classroom or other group we can build wonderful memories.

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.

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.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

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

Lord, let me heed the angels you put in my path.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.

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

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

Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.

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.

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

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.

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

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

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 guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.

We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves.

This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.

A dream without a plan is just a wish

The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.

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

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

That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

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