E. L. Konigsburg
I think it's important to experience kindness so that you can experience it more in the future. I believe that patterns of emotional behavior are set down before adolescence. And I think that if you have not observed kindness, you will not recognize it. You have to experience kindness in order to be kind.
The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.
I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no guidance in the high school at all. It was a mill town, and I never knew anyone who made their living from the arts. When you did go away to college, you went away to be something - an engineer, or a teacher, or a chemist.
When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. Then I taught science at a private girls' school. I had three children and waited until all three were in school before I started writing.
Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.
I was born in New York City. But my family moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and half when we lived in Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up in small towns in Pennsylvania. I graduated from high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania.
I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and what happens to me, and from things I read.
After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.
Readers let me know that they like books that have more to them than meets the eye. Had they not let me know that, I never would have written 'The View From Saturday.'
Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of place and a feeling of self-consciousness - self-consciousness about one's education and exposure, both of which tend to be limited. On the other hand, limited possibilities also mean creating your own options.
I think most of us are outsiders. And I think that's good because it makes you question things.
When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I was male or female. Also, I was a great admirer of E.B. White, so I may have thought that it would bring me luck to submit my first manuscript as 'E.L.' But if I were starting out today, I would use my first name.
Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from something that happens in my head and my heart.
Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.Collection: Facts
The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.Collection: Home
Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That's the hardest thing to find.Collection: Being Yourself
Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.Collection: Happiness
It often takes more courage to be a passenger than a driver.Collection: Passengers
Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.Collection: Healthy
Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space -- it makes connections.Collection: Thinking
Lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that.Collection: Inspirational
The eyes are the windows of the soul.... If someone was to look into your eyes, what would you want them to see?Collection: Eye
Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.Collection: Journey
Because way down deep they know that civilized people have to preserve rare birds.Collection: People
When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else.Collection: Hug
Indecisiveness wears a person out.Collection: Indecision
They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.Collection: Color
Sometimes we even have to risk making fools of ourselves.Collection: Life
Biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.Collection: Waiting
Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts?Collection: Hurt
Five minutes of planning are worth fifteen minutes of just looking.Collection: Fifteen
I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.Collection: Children
When I visit schools and talk to students about writing, I give them one word of advice and I give it to them quickly and loudly-FINISH! Starting something is easier than finishing it. You must have discipline to go from a few sentences, to a few paragraphs, to a piece of writing that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Finishing something bridges the difference between someone who has talent and one who does not. My best advice? Apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair-and finish. FINISH!Collection: Writing
Never have a long conversation with anyone who says "between you and I.Collection: Long
How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence.Collection: Missing
I'm not sure that love and like aren't like cats and dogs: One can't grow up to be the other, but they can be taught to live under the same roof.Collection: Dog
By the time they get to 6th grade honor roll students won't risk making a mistake, and sometimes to be successful, you have to risk making mistakes.Collection: Mistake
Ninety percent of who you are is invisible." - Mrs. ZenderCollection: Invisible
I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.Collection: Love
Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.Collection: Running
There's something nice and safe about having money.Collection: Nice
Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts.Collection: Adventure
It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.Collection: Thank You
The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary.Collection: Differences
Every job in the world has some built-in boredom. No man can stay excited about something every minute he is doing it. Routine is as necessary to life as water is to beer; it is the base that holds the flavors and spices together.Collection: Jobs
True simplicity is elegant.Collection: Simplicity
There were times in school when a person had to do things fast, cheap, and without character.Collection: School
Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides.Collection: People
I don't think there is any feeling I like more than the one that someone is glad to see me. —Connor KaneCollection: Thinking
Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.Collection: Writing