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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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February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.
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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I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.
Katherine Paterson
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a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.
Katherine Paterson
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Shh he said. Look. Where? Can't you see'um? he whispered. All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you. Me? Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.
Katherine Paterson
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Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.
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
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Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.
Katherine Paterson
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The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.
Katherine Paterson
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We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.
Katherine Paterson
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To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
Katherine Paterson
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Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.
Katherine Paterson
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Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.
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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It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.
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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I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.
Katherine Paterson
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...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.
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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It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.
Katherine Paterson