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.Collection: Writing
We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.Collection: Missing
. . . Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.Collection: Home
Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.Collection: Exercise
The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything.Collection: Winter
Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.Collection: Years
What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.Collection: Gratitude
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.Collection: Art
Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.Collection: Coaching
Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.Collection: Dream
He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.Collection: May
You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.Collection: Book
It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.Collection: War
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.Collection: Fun
What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Real
Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.Collection: Fire
I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.Collection: Fate
...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.Collection: Christian
Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.Collection: Mean
February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.Collection: Defense
a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.Collection: Art
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?Collection: Eye
My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.Collection: Heart
I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.Collection: War
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.Collection: Book
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.Collection: Real
A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.Collection: Book
I think, she began quietly, I think we want... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music.... we want for our beautiful children some beauty. She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. We want roses.Collection: Beautiful
...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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Reading