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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.

Beverly Cleary

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Beverly Cleary
Age: 104 †
Born: 1916
Born: April 12
Died: 2021
Died: March 25
Author
Autobiographer
Librarian
Writer
McMinnville
Oregon
Beverly Atlee Cleary
Books
Child
Better
Book
Children
Disliked
Learned

More quotes by Beverly Cleary

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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.
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Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.
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I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.
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Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.
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Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents' Night.
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My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.
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I was an only child I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
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Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.
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We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.
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I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
Beverly Cleary