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a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

Katherine Paterson

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Katherine Paterson
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
Author
Missionary
Novelist
Writer
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
Firsts
Book
First
Must
Work
Intends
Entertaining
Art

More quotes by 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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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's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.
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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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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...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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We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.
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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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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. . . 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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Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.
Katherine Paterson
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Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.
Katherine Paterson
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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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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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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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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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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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Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.
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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If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?
Katherine Paterson