Katherine Paterson Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.

Katherine Paterson
It might have happened sooner had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

Katherine Paterson
The basic task of education is the care and feeding of the imagination.

Katherine Paterson
Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.

Katherine Paterson
Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

Katherine Paterson
It was the kind of laughter that caught like briars in her chest and felt very much like pain.

Katherine Paterson
Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse — except August.

Katherine Paterson
If there was anything her short life had taught her, it was that a person must be tough. Otherwise, you were had.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
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.

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

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

Katherine Paterson
He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.

Katherine Paterson
"Trotter its all wrong. Nothing turned out the way it was supposed to." "How do you mean supposed to? Life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough." [..] "If life is so bad, how come you're so happy?" "Did I say bad? I said it was tough. Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job, now is there?"

Katherine Paterson
One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.

Katherine Paterson
It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

Katherine Paterson
On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.

Katherine Paterson
We humans have had from time unknown the compulsion to name things and thus to be able to deal with them. The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it. And in ancient thought the name itself has power, so that to know someone's name is to have a certain power over him. And in some societies, as you know, there was a public name and a real or secret name, which would not be revealed to others.

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

Katherine Paterson
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.

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

Katherine Paterson
I think, she began quietly, I think we want... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music.... we want for our beautiful children some beauty. She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. We want roses....

Katherine Paterson
The world that is in me is the only world I have by which to grasp the world outside and as I write fiction, it is the chart by which I must steer.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
"Why don't we change our clothes and watch TV or something over at your house?" He felt like hugging her. "I'll make us some coffee," he said joyfully. "Yuk," she said smiling and began to run for the old Perkins place, that beautiful, graceful run of hers that neither mud nor water could defeat.

Katherine Paterson
When Leslie spoke, the words rolled out so regally, you knew she was a proper queen. He could hardly manage English, much less the poetic language of a king.

Katherine Paterson