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For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

Kate DiCamillo

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Kate DiCamillo
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 25
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo
Book
Dipper
Children
Firefly
Writing
Grownups
Cricket
Poems
Picture
Novel
Bigs

More quotes by Kate DiCamillo

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The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time.
Kate DiCamillo
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Life was so short so many beautiful things slipped away.
Kate DiCamillo
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Mercy Watson is obsessed with toast. What was blocking me was the challenge of trying to understand what she loves, what motivates her. That was the missing piece. Toast became the physical symbol of Mercy's hopefully endearing greed and obsession. Without that element in place, it didn't make sense.
Kate DiCamillo
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You don't realize what you're going to get, and you can't prepare yourself for it.
Kate DiCamillo
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Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
Kate DiCamillo
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Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.
Kate DiCamillo
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Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.
Kate DiCamillo
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What's my weirdest adventure? Yikes, there've been so very many. Perhaps the pig+vegetable+Taiwanese-army-guys boat ride to the island off the coast of Taiwan qualifies as the weirdest. Or at least the most seasick.
Kate DiCamillo
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I write two pages - that's all I write. It takes me about an hour. I've learned that's all I'm capable of and to push myself beyond that is foolhardy. It's a very delicate thing, and I will not abuse it. So I write two pages, then I get up from the computer.
Kate DiCamillo
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I am just always, always paying attention - waiting for the words, or image, or name that will be the beginning of a story.
Kate DiCamillo
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The closest I can get to describing what happens is that voices come to me. I feel like I'm accessing something that is deeper and richer than me.
Kate DiCamillo
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I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.
Kate DiCamillo
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The sound of the king's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.
Kate DiCamillo
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While we were working, we were writing about a tall girl and a short girl, which we thought was funny, because Alison's [McGhee] tall and I'm short.
Kate DiCamillo
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Love is in all of the books, and that's the connective tissue between them. There's a lot of hope in me I can feel it. These stories are balls of light for me.
Kate DiCamillo
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It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.
Kate DiCamillo
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Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.
Kate DiCamillo
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I think, oh my god, kids are reading, and they care about a book enough to come over and talk to me about a book that they care about. If I think about it as being a celebrity, it would freak me out. But I just think, lucky me, that I get to be a part of this whole thing.
Kate DiCamillo
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Life is hard. Life is beautiful. Life is difficult. Life is wonderful.
Kate DiCamillo
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Most of my books begin with an image or a voice - one small thing - and I don't know what it is going to become.
Kate DiCamillo