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One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.

Katherine Paterson

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Katherine Paterson
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
Author
Missionary
Novelist
Writer
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
Feel
Feels
Important
Thing
Work
Japan
Make
Living
Left
Art

More quotes by Katherine Paterson

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life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough
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'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.
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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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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We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.
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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Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.
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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A dream without a plan is just a wish
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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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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Youth is a mortal wound.
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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Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.
Katherine Paterson
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Lord, let me heed the angels you put in my path.
Katherine Paterson
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The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.
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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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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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