Katherine Paterson Quotes

“Shh," he said. "Look."
"Where?"
"Can't you see'um?" he whispered. "All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you."
"Me?"
"Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.”

“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.”

“You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.”

“That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.”

“Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.”

“Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.”

“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.”

“You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.”

“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.”

“"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.”

“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.”

“To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.”

“You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.”

“Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.”

“When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget… So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.”

“He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.”

“You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.”

“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?”

“I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.”

“I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?”

“Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.”

“He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry. […] She wouldn't laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something he could be proud of.”

“Even a prince may be a fool”

“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.”

“So as the water nibbled away at our land, the war nibbled away at our souls.”

“The movie does, I think, show very well the depth of the friendship and the power of imagination. Which were things I hoped that it would show.”

“Nothing means more to a writer than to get a letter from a reader who has deeply connected to one of your books.”

“My admittedly limited experience on the internet and with computer “information”, has revealed that this is a rather shallow sort of knowledge and impersonal sort of human connection. I think great books and real live human beings do a better job of making us wise, compassionate people.”

“If you start [in book] with telling people what they are supposed to feel and what they are supposed to experience it simply doesn’t work. Because it really has to come from the reader…”