Quote

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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Kate DiCamillo
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 25
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo
Sound
Words
Else
Everything
Drafts
Book
Worked
Come
Books
Way
Lasts
Love
Last

More quotes by Kate DiCamillo

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There's nothing more fabulous than an adult saying to you, I think that you might like this one [book]. So I'm grateful every time that happens. It's an amazing thing that people care that passionately.
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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Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing I wanted to be a Writer.
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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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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Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.
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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Her sister, Holly McGhee, is an agent, and she's my agent in New York. She's Alison's agent too. Even though Alison lives here in Minneapolis, I met Alison through Holly, when Holly came to Minneapolis to visit Alison.
Kate DiCamillo
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In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter. I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, Maybe they do...maybe stories matter.
Kate DiCamillo
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The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.
Kate DiCamillo
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I journal for about half an hour, and by the time that's done, the business day on the East Coast has begun. The phone starts to ring, and the rest of the day is spent dealing with the business of writing. My workday is done at about 3:00.
Kate DiCamillo
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Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.
Kate DiCamillo
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It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.
Kate DiCamillo
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Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl? The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.
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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Reading might not be the way that the child engages with the world, but it should be something that they all learn how to do, and that they get to have for themselves, as opposed to somebody telling them what to do and how to do it.
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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Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
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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Farewell” is not the word that you would like to hear from your mother as you are being led to the dungeon by 2 oversize mice in black hoods. Words that you would like to hear are “Take me instead, I will go to the dungeon in my sons place.” There is a great deal of comfort in those words.
Kate DiCamillo