Kate DiCamillo
Miracles and magic pervade the things that I've written, but yet there are no miracles and there is no magic.Collection: Miracle
I read whatever the publisher sends me.Collection: Publishers
Going out and not only meeting the kids, but meeting the teachers and the librarians and seeing the world, fills me up.Collection: Teacher
I need to write, and I can't write when I'm on the road.Collection: Writing
I am really an introvert, and I need that time alone for a variety of reasons.Collection: Needs
Everything when I was a kid was illustrated.Collection: Kids
I'm just doing what I've done my whole life, which is talking to people about books and making them read. It's what I do in my friendships. "Here, you have to read this, you have to read this."Collection: Book
The themes in my books, like in life, are about grace and redemption and you never know when they're going to show up and what form they're going to be in. Stories emerge from keeping your heart open to the people that cross in front of you or the dogs or the mice, and their ability to open you up and enrich your life.Collection: Dog
There's a Buddhist precept that the only thing you deserve is the chance to do the work, and I've been given the chance to do the work.Collection: Buddhist
That you can go anywhere in America and get a book from a library is just the most amazing thing in the world. It's not a duty; it's a privilege and it's a joy. That joy is doubled and tripled and quadrupled if you read with other people.Collection: Book
I never want to be a role model.Collection: Role Models
I have not Googled myself. I have not looked at myself on Amazon. It could drive you wild.Collection: Amazon
As far as books getting turned into movies, I fared very, very well.Collection: Book
No matter how hard you try to be present at home, you're always doing the things that you have to do.Collection: Home
I think I'm succinct to the point of trying to write the two-word novel. Editing my work almost never means taking anything out but rather adding, because I'm always stripping down. I tend to under-write rather than over-write.Collection: Writing
I show up and try, but I may have to ask myself if I need to wait and let myself regenerate and take a break. I know that this thing that makes the stories has to be treated gently. So sometimes I'll just stop and let the well fill up. With my work, sometimes I hate doing it, but I love having done it. The key is to keep doing it.Collection: Hate
We all live in fear of getting blocked no matter what kind of art we're trying to do. It happens all the time, but I prefer to think of it as a bad day.Collection: Art
When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.Collection: Writing
When I get to a point in my book writing when I don't know what I'm going to do next, I'll come back look at underlined passages and see if the images I wrote still have a certain amount of resonance for me.Collection: Book
If there is anything that I think I might use later, I underline it.Collection: Thinking
The funny thing is, when I've gone through the relentless editing process, my editor and I are amazed the Mercy Watson books still make us laugh. The same jokes that made us laugh the first time around still make us laugh in the 16th rendition.Collection: Book
A friend of mine said Winn-Dixie is the way that people want the world to be and Tiger Rising is the way that it is.Collection: People
As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.Collection: Writing
In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, "Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter." I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, "Maybe they do...maybe stories matter."Collection: Airports
[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, "What are you working on now?" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said "It doesn't matter at all now."Collection: Princess
I was visiting my mother in Florida when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened. I was working on The Tale of Despereaux at that point. I had already gone into writing it with a great deal of trepidation and fear, and then this God-awful thing happens and it was really hard to even get back home to Minneapolis.Collection: Mother
I'm predisposed to think that as a people, we're hardwired to understand things through the telling of stories. I think that as human beings it's part of who we are.Collection: Thinking
All of that loneliness and longing in my heart got transferred into the book Because of Winn-Dixie, I guess.Collection: Loneliness
I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.Collection: Writing
It's a book [Bink & Gollie] about shortness and tallness, so I think it's appropriate to discuss the virtues of shortness.Collection: Book
The Tale of Despereaux is the story of an unlikely hero, a mouse, who falls in love with a princess and then must save her. It's a triumph of the human spirit, via a mouse.Collection: Falling In Love
I think that that's part of how people have responded to The Tiger Rising. It's what I call my dark child. It's gotten sandwiched in between two overachieving, tap-dance-performing kids - Winn-Dixie and Despereaux.Collection: Children
It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.Collection: Children
I'm in trouble if they can't, because everyone's taller than me, and if that's true, that means I can't have any friends! Alison [McGhee] and I look very much like, I was going to say Bink and Gollie, but I meant Mutt and Jeff. We look ridiculous when we walk down the street together, because she's so tall and I'm so short. But yes, tall people and short people can, and should be, friends. I, personally, like being short. I think it makes things easier.Collection: Mean
There can be a lot of longevity in the repetition of things being told again and again in a variety of ways.Collection: Way
Nothing new ever happens in the books. It's the same old theme.Collection: Book
I have done quite a few signings at bookstores, libraries and conferences. I have received phone calls and letters from people who liked the book.Collection: Book
Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible.Collection: Believe
Reader, you may ask this queston. In fact, you must ask this question. Is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, big-eared mouse to fall in love with a beautiful princess named Pea? The answer is... Yes. Of course it's ridiculous. Love is ridiculous. But love is also wonderful. And powerful.Collection: Beautiful
There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.Collection: Revenge
Everything, as you well know . . . cannot always be sweetness and light.Collection: Light
During the night, while Bull and Lucy slept, Edward, with ever-open eyes, stared up at the constellations. He said their names, and then he said the names of the people who loved him. He started with Abilene, and then went on to Nellie and Lawrence and from there to Bull and Lucy, and then he ended again with Abilene: Abilene, Nellie, Lawrence, Bull, Lucy, Abilene. See? Edward told Pellegrina. I am not like the princess. I know about love.Collection: Princess
At least Lester had the decency to weep at his act of perfidy. Reader, do you know what 'perfidy' means? I have a feeling you do, based on the scene that unfolded here. But you should look up the word in your dictionary, just to be sure.Collection: Mean
Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains. And spools of thread.Collection: Powerful
Farewell” is not the word that you would like to hear from your mother as you are being led to the dungeon by 2 oversize mice in black hoods. Words that you would like to hear are “Take me instead, I will go to the dungeon in my sons place.” There is a great deal of comfort in those words.Collection: Mother
Have you, in truth, ever seen something so heartbreakingly lovely? What are we to make of a world where stars shine bright in the midst of so much darkness and gloom?Collection: Stars
He was weeping. Although 'weeping' really is to small a word for the activity the kind had undertaken. Tears were cascading from his eyes. A small puddle had formed at his feet. I am not exaggerating. The king, it seemed, was intent on crying himself a river.Collection: Kings
This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.Collection: Play
Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting, always, with the light. She did not like the rat. She would neverlike the rat, but she knew what she must do to save her own heart.Collection: Heart