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To me the book is like having a kid. I have to let it go out in the world, and great things will happen. Maybe they won't, but it has to keep on moving.

Kate DiCamillo

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Kate DiCamillo
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 25
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo
Things
Happen
Like
Maybe
World
Moving
Keep
Happens
Kids
Book
Great

More quotes by 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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Do you think everybody misses somebody? Like I miss my mama?” “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. She closed her eyes. “I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.
Kate DiCamillo
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In a dark time, doors will sometimes magically open and let us step inside to the warmth and light of a community.
Kate DiCamillo
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[He] had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.
Kate DiCamillo
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Reading is my passion.
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 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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This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.
Kate DiCamillo
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The funny thing is, when I've gone through the relentless editing process, my editor and I are amazed the Mercy Watson books still make us laugh. The same jokes that made us laugh the first time around still make us laugh in the 16th rendition.
Kate DiCamillo
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I think for everybody reading can be a solace, illumination, education.
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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The book [The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane] is about the fact that living in this world means that your heart is necessarily going to get broken. But the book also says that's okay. That's the only way to live a truly human life - with your heart getting broken - and eventually getting flooded with love.
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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Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.
Kate DiCamillo
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When I was a kid I loved to read, but I didn't write and I didn't create imaginary worlds. So, if one student walks away thinking, She's obviously just an ordinary person, yet she gets to make her living doing what she wants to do. Maybe that applies to me, too, then I feel like my time has been well spent.
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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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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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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And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.
Kate DiCamillo
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I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.
Kate DiCamillo