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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
Child
Write
Someone
Children
Writing
Something
Called

More quotes by 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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The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything.
Katherine Paterson
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Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately marketable.
Katherine Paterson
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February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.
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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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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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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It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing - one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.
Katherine Paterson
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If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.
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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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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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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He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.
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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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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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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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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It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.
Katherine Paterson
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I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.
Katherine Paterson
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Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.
Katherine Paterson