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...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.

Katherine Paterson

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Katherine Paterson
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
Author
Missionary
Novelist
Writer
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
Writing
Something
Called
Child
Write
Someone
Children

More quotes by Katherine Paterson

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I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.
Katherine Paterson
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It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.
Katherine Paterson
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This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.
Katherine Paterson
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The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.
Katherine Paterson
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Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious.
Katherine Paterson
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Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
Katherine Paterson
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I think, she began quietly, I think we want... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music.... we want for our beautiful children some beauty. She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. We want roses.
Katherine Paterson
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Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.
Katherine Paterson
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You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.
Katherine Paterson
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You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.
Katherine Paterson
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You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.
Katherine Paterson
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On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.
Katherine Paterson
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A dream without a plan is just a wish
Katherine Paterson
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If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?
Katherine Paterson
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. . . Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.
Katherine Paterson
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We can read the paper or current magazines and learn about national and world events, think about controversial subjects, learn how to disagree respectfully, and how, finally, to act on our convictions. We can read for pure delight, and if we do this as a family or classroom or other group we can build wonderful memories.
Katherine Paterson
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Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.
Katherine Paterson
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You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.
Katherine Paterson
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You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.
Katherine Paterson
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I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.
Katherine Paterson