Katherine Paterson Quotes
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He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so. He did not have to make any announcement to Leslie that he had changed his mind about her. She already knew it.
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I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.
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If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?
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When Leslie spoke, the words rolled out so regally, you knew she was a proper queen. He could hardly manage English, much less the poetic language of a king.
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Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.
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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.
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I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.
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I love writing for young adults because they are such a wonderful audience, they are good readers, and they care about the books they read.
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The best thing about being a writer is it gives you readers who understand your deepest feelings and fears.
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If there was anything her short life had taught her, it was that a person must be tough. Otherwise, you were had.
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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.
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The problem with people who are afraid of imagination, of fantasy, is that their world becomes so narrow that I don't see how they can imagine beyond what their senses can verify. We know from science that there are entire worlds that our senses can't verify.
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Some say it is the elements of hope and wonder in children's books that make them special. But there are many dark young adult novels these days. Adults loved Harry Potter, though it was written for the young. In the end, it is probably up to the reader of any age to decide if this book is for him or her.
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Even a prince may be a fool
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She just took off running to the old Perkins place. He couldn't help turning to watch. She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn. So smooth. The word 'beautiful' came to his mind, but he shook it away and hurried up to his house.
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I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.
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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.
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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.
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Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
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I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.
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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.
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'Why don't we change our clothes and watch TV or something over at your house?' He felt like hugging her. 'I'll make us some coffee,' he said joyfully. 'Yuk,' she said smiling and began to run for the old Perkins place, that beautiful, graceful run of hers that neither mud nor water could defeat.
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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.
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I like to write about a lot of things, which is why my books are different. This is probably why I don't like to write sequels, but chiefly I like to write about people.