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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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Kate DiCamillo
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 25
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo
Names
Waiting
Attention
Story
Words
Paying
Stories
Image
Always
Beginning
Name

More quotes by Kate DiCamillo

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No one cared what she wanted. No one had ever cared. And perhaps, worst of all, no one ever would care.
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
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In The Tale of Despereaux, there is a lot of darkness, a lot of despair. There's also a lot of light, redemption, hope. There's forgiveness, there's friendship, there's love. But the world in all of its potential craziness is also there.
Kate DiCamillo
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I always wanted to be a character, when I worked at Disney, but I wasn't short enough for certain characters and I wasn't tall enough for others. I wanted to be a chipmunk I think 4'10 was the cutoff.
Kate DiCamillo
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I grew up in Florida, and I wanted to go home and I couldn't. I didn't have the money. The book [The Tiger Rising] was a way to go home.
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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I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language.
Kate DiCamillo
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I'm grateful for every teacher or librarian who reads a book and says, This is exactly the book that so-and-so needs to read I'll get it in his hands. I'm amazed at the network of adults who make sure that kids get books.
Kate DiCamillo
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I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.
Kate DiCamillo
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I love words I love the way they sound. Once I've worked on everything else, the last drafts of my books come down to how they sound.
Kate DiCamillo
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I think Tony Fucile, who did the illustrations [for Bink & Gollie], is an absolute genius. I've never met him.
Kate DiCamillo
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I was visiting my mother in Florida when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened. I was working on The Tale of Despereaux at that point. I had already gone into writing it with a great deal of trepidation and fear, and then this God-awful thing happens and it was really hard to even get back home to Minneapolis.
Kate DiCamillo
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Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart. (Old Doll)
Kate DiCamillo
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Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.
Kate DiCamillo
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[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, What are you working on now? And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said It doesn't matter at all now.
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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There are so many difficult things and stories can make them palatable. That's the way I have always felt.
Kate DiCamillo
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I don't know what Alison [McGhee] thinks, but I very strongly doubt that we will ever see the parents of Bink or Gollie. However, I do think it would be fun to make Tony Fucile draw portraits of the parental units and have those portraits sitting on Bink's mantel or in Gollie's kitchen. Glowering. A little.
Kate DiCamillo
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I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.
Kate DiCamillo
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Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible.
Kate DiCamillo