Quote

...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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Katherine Paterson
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: October 31
Author
Missionary
Novelist
Writer
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson
Reason
Think
Thinking
Figured
People
Became
Writer
Call
Working
Read

More quotes by Katherine Paterson

Image
We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.
Katherine Paterson
Image
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
Image
It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.
Katherine Paterson
Image
You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.
Katherine Paterson
Image
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
Image
You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.
Katherine Paterson
Image
I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.
Katherine Paterson
Image
Lord, let me heed the angels you put in my path.
Katherine Paterson
Image
I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.
Katherine Paterson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.
Katherine Paterson