Katherine Paterson Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

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

Katherine Paterson
A work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

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

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

Katherine Paterson
If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?

Katherine Paterson
When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

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

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

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

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

Katherine Paterson
He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry. [...] She wouldn't laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something he could be proud of.

Katherine Paterson
She just took off running to the old Perkins place. He couldn't help turning to watch. She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn. So smooth. The word "beautiful" came to his mind, but he shook it away and hurried up to his house.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so. He did not have to make any announcement to Leslie that he had changed his mind about her. She already knew it.

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

Katherine Paterson
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.

Katherine Paterson
We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds... We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

Katherine Paterson
Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn.

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

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

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

Katherine Paterson
I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.

Katherine Paterson
Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

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

Katherine Paterson