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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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Katherine Paterson
Age: 91
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
Author
Missionary
Novelist
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Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
Writing
Story
Shape
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Chaos
Art
Shapes
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Meaning
Stories
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Past
Events
Relating
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Bringing
More quotes by Katherine Paterson
I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.
Katherine Paterson
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
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
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
You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.
Katherine Paterson
Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.
Katherine Paterson
You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.
Katherine Paterson
To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
Katherine Paterson
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
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
The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything.
Katherine Paterson
...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
the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.
Katherine Paterson
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
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
February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.
Katherine Paterson
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
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
Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.
Katherine Paterson
Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.
Katherine Paterson