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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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Katherine Paterson
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
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Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
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More quotes by 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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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 such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment.
Katherine Paterson
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I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.
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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Youth is a mortal wound.
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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. . . 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 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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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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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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As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.
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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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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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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Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.
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 world that is in me is the only world I have by which to grasp the world outside and as I write fiction, it is the chart by which I must steer.
Katherine Paterson
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I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.
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