Katherine Paterson Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it. — Katherine Paterson

Dammit, Trotter. Don't try to make a stinking Christian out of me. — Katherine Paterson

Then Jess gave himself over to the numbness that was buzzing to be let out from a corner of his brain. — Katherine Paterson

The long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, and you weren't yet where you were going. You were nowhere. It might be beautiful outside the window-and it was, she had sense enough to realize that-but it wasn't anywhere to her, just a scene passing by that was framed by the train window. (p160) — Katherine Paterson

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

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 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

Daredevil nature as a young man. When I read what William Roth had written, I sighed. So that was where my own two boys had gotten the trait that was turning their mother's hair gray. — Katherine Paterson

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. — Katherine Paterson

Leslie called them Judy and Bill, which bothered Jess more than he wanted it to. It was none of his business what Leslie called her parents. But he just couldn't get used to it. — Katherine Paterson

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order. — Katherine Paterson

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

Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures. — Katherine Paterson

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart. — Katherine Paterson

It was a three-dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings. — Katherine Paterson

A colleague of hers had discovered that the Biblical sentence found in John 4:7 contained all the sounds in nearly every known language. — Katherine Paterson

It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own. — Katherine Paterson

The conquering army had perpetrated untold atrocities. The Japanese had occupied my home and twice forced us to leave the land I loved. — Katherine Paterson

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness. — Katherine Paterson

Leslie named their secret land "Terabithia," and she loaned Jess all of her books about Narnia, so he would know how things went in a magic kingdom - how the animals and the trees must be protected and how a ruler must behave. — Katherine Paterson

Trouble can always be borne when it is shared. — Katherine Paterson

The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way. — Katherine Paterson

Lord, let me heed the angels you put in my path. — Katherine Paterson

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections. — Katherine Paterson

I had so looked forward to her walking." Maud carried her thirteen-month-old sister a few steps away and put her down on her feet. "Walk to Daddy," Maud said, and the baby threw out her arms and took the few steps across the space to her father's chair. — Katherine Paterson

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

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing. — Katherine Paterson

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

I have been mocked by beauty, too. But it was the beauty which cost me nothing that in the end turned upon me. — 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

When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid. — Katherine Paterson

The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say. — Katherine Paterson

watched in horror until Walter Cronkite finally announced the news that Kennedy was dead. The boys didn't try to argue about the stupidity of the ancient Hebrews again. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them. — Katherine Paterson

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means. — Katherine Paterson

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order. — Katherine Paterson

What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful. — Katherine Paterson

What is man - and of course the writer means all of us puny little insignificant creatures - what is a mere human being that God who made the immense universe should ever notice?' She chuckled. 'The sky does take you down to size.'
Not even big as bugs. Not even a speck of dust to the nearest star,' Angel agreed.
But the psalmist answers his own question. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor ... " '
What?' Angel asked, not sure she had heard right.
A little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.'
The real angels? Do you believe that?'
Yes, Angel, I do. When people look down on me, and these days' - she laughed shortly - 'these days everyone over the age of five does. When people look down on me, I remember that God looks at this pitiful, twisted old thing that I have become and crowns me with glory. — Katherine Paterson

Gee, I'm really glad I came."
Jess turned to Leslie in unbelief.
"It was better than a movie."
"You're kidding."
"No, I'm not." And she wasn't. He could tell by her face. "That whole Jesus thing is really interesting, isn't it?"
"What d'you mean?"
"All those people wanting to kill him when he hadn't done anything to hurt them." She hesitated. "It's really kind of a beautiful story - like Abraham Lincoln or Socrates - or Aslan. — Katherine Paterson

Sometimes you have to favor your heel, even if it means you're hurting your toe. — Katherine Paterson

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful. — Katherine Paterson

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you. — Katherine Paterson

But then, oh, my blessed, he smiled. I guess from that moment I knew I was going to marry Joseph Wojtkiewicz
God, pope, three motherless children, unspellable name and all. For when he smiled, he looked like the kind of man who would sing to the oysters. — Katherine Paterson

You're the proverbial diamond in the rough", she'd said to him once, touching his nose lightly with the tip of her electrifying finger. — Katherine Paterson

A story is open-ended. A story invites you into it to make your own meaning. — Katherine Paterson

If life is so bad, how come you're so happy?" "Did I say bad? I said it was tough. Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job, now is there? — Katherine Paterson

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits. — Katherine Paterson

In the Book of Genesis, Abraham believes that God is commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son as proof of his love and obedience. But just as Abraham is about to thrust the knife into his terrified child, an angel grasps his hand and there in the thicket is a sheep that God has provided for the sacrifice. Most people find this story horrifying, but what my father taught me that day was this: No matter how sacred the calling appears, it is not God's will for parents to sacrifice their children. — Katherine Paterson

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there
like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone. — Katherine Paterson

I got up the nerve to ask her if she remembered that first visit and my terrible faux pas. She pretended, in true Japanese fashion, that it had never happened. — Katherine Paterson

A novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed. — Katherine Paterson

Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. — Katherine Paterson

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

She wasn't scared of going deep, deep down in a world of no air and little light — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn't king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn't Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world - huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? (Handle with care - everything - even the predators.)
Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn't there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.
As for the terrors ahead - for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him - well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie?
Right. — Katherine Paterson

I just gave up trying to be a Christian ... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together. — Katherine Paterson

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

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.' — Katherine Paterson

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

We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves. — Katherine Paterson

Don't tell me no one ever gave you a chance. You don't need anything given to you. You can make your own chances. But first you have to know what you're after, my dear. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened. — Katherine Paterson

She had nothing against any of the other guests, but once she started she saw no way to stop. There was nothing to do but turn the hose against every arriving guest. No one coming out of the house to reason with her was safe either. — 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

Drive them out utterly, so they may never return and prey upon our people. — Katherine Paterson

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not. — Katherine Paterson

You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like. — Katherine Paterson

A frightening number of whom had IQ scores in the low 70s? I stopped reading and just stuck the records out of sight in a bottom drawer of my desk, and never thought of them again until the end of the year when I was throwing away the accumulation of papers in my desk. I was furious with those scores. My kids were not dumb! I've never trusted standardized tests since. — Katherine Paterson

The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything. — Katherine Paterson

Ain't 'cha gonna run?" she asked.
"No," he said, shoving the sheet away. "I'm gonna fly. — Katherine Paterson

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream? — Katherine Paterson

In each of the separate sections Mother would put a different treat - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sesame cookies, and peanuts. — Katherine Paterson

He nodded vigorously. Anything was better than promising to fight Janice Avery. — Katherine Paterson

The moral, of course, is that you must always try to see other people's Point of View before you criticize anybody. Histories are crammed full of unkind things, silly things, and untrue things - why? Because so often the people who write them will not try to see or feel any Point of View but their own ... So mind that you always look out for the Point of View and help people to see yours, too, if you want them to understand you. — Katherine Paterson

I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life. — Katherine Paterson

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

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations. — Katherine Paterson

Jess wouldn't argue that, but he saw her as a beautiful wild creature who had been caught for a moment in that dirty old cage of a schoolhouse, perhaps by mistake. — 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 ain't got no blood claim on you, and the Lord in Heaven knows I want you to have a good life with your own people. But" - her huge bass voice broke up into little squeaky pieces - "but it's killing me to see you go. — Katherine Paterson

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

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

Leslie was one of those people who sat quietly at her desk, never whispering or daydreaming or chewing gum, doing beautiful schoolwork, and yet her brain was so full of mischief that if the teacher could have once seen through that mask of perfection, she would have thrown her out in horror. — 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

Jess followed, still trying to figure out why two grown people and a smart girl like Leslie wanted to leave a comfortable life in the suburbs for a place like this. They watched the bus roar off. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

a dream without a plan is just a wish — Katherine Paterson

I don't care. I don't care". He was crying now, crying so hard he could barely breathe. — Katherine Paterson

Could be a magic country like Narnia, and the only way you can get in is by swinging across on this enchanted rope. — Katherine Paterson

For the only time in my life I would be living with a chain-smoking semi-invalid whose chief point of pride in life was his membership in the Ku Klux Clan. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn. — Katherine Paterson

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living. — Katherine Paterson

What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good. We have no idea what the next ten years, much less the next fifty years, will demand of the coming generation. What we do know is that unless we have a people prepared and eager to meet those crises creatively and compassionately, there is not much hope for this poor old planet of ours. — Katherine Paterson

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

He had promised Leslie that after Christmas he would stay home and fix up the house and plant his garden and listen to music and read books out loud and write only in his spare time. — Katherine Paterson

As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can. — Katherine Paterson