110+ Katherine Paterson Quotes On Education, Freedom And Creative

Katherine Paterson is an American author of children's and young adult fiction. She is best known for her Newbery Medal-winning books Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved. Paterson has also written many other books, including The Great Gilly Hopkins, Lyddie, and The Master Puppeteer. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Katherine Paterson on education, life, love.

Top 10 Katherine Paterson Quotes

1. The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.
2. It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.
3. To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
4. Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.
5. I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?
6. Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.
7. I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.
8. 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.
9. February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.
10. A dream without a plan is just a wish

Katherine Paterson Short Quotes

• Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do.
• Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.
• A library is a feast to which we are all invited.
• A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.
• Many people are angry when they make a mistake, but very few people have the sense to be sorry.
• Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.
• Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.
• Impressed. Lord. He had nearly drowned.
• Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.
• The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything.

Katherine Paterson Quotes About Life

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

life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough — Katherine Paterson

You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given. — Katherine Paterson

The children's book world has given me wonderful friendships and an unbelievably rich life. — Katherine Paterson

Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader. — Katherine Paterson

Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate. — Katherine Paterson

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. — 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

We book people are always preaching about reading aloud to children, but unless you do, you can't realize how it enriches family life. — 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

Katherine Paterson Quotes About Work

...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 work reveals the creator - and as our universe in its vastness, its orderliness, its exquisite detail, tells us something of the One who made it, so a work of fiction, for better or worse, will reveal the writer. — 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

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining. — Katherine Paterson

One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in. — 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

Katherine Paterson Quotes About Children

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

...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child. — Katherine Paterson

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. — 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

It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment. — Katherine Paterson

Katherine Paterson Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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. — Katherine Paterson

More than fifty years ago Sputnik dramatically raised the nation's awareness of what was lacking in science and math education in America. What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good. — 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

On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles. — 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

. . . 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. — 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

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul. — 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

We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird. — 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

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

All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us. — Katherine Paterson

We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes. — 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

There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid. — 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

Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom. — Katherine Paterson

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. — 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

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

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

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives. — Katherine Paterson

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains. — 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

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

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

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

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say. — 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

Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious. They are like water, which gives life and growth and refreshment, but because it has always been abundant, we treat it cheaply. We waste it; we pollute it, and doctor it. Later we blame the quality of the water because we have misused it. — Katherine Paterson

The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress. — 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

It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. — Katherine Paterson

We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story. And somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone. — Katherine Paterson

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up. — Katherine Paterson

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

Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed. — Katherine Paterson

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you. — 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 wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before. — 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

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

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter. — Katherine Paterson

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

I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write. — 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 seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness. — Katherine Paterson

We can read the paper or current magazines and learn about national and world events, think about controversial subjects, learn how to disagree respectfully, and how, finally, to act on our convictions. We can read for pure delight, and if we do this as a family or classroom or other group we can build wonderful memories. — Katherine Paterson

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

I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how. — Katherine Paterson

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied. — Katherine Paterson

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. — Katherine Paterson

Youth is a mortal wound. — 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

I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write. — Katherine Paterson

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

We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me. — Katherine Paterson

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

We humans have had from time unknown the compulsion to name things and thus to be able to deal with them. The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it. And in ancient thought the name itself has power, so that to know someone's name is to have a certain power over him. And in some societies, as you know, there was a public name and a real or secret name, which would not be revealed to others. — 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Katherine Paterson

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven? — Katherine Paterson

Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious. — Katherine Paterson

Life Lessons by Katherine Paterson

1. Katherine Paterson's work emphasizes the importance of empathy, kindness, and understanding in order to create a better world.
2. Through her stories, Paterson encourages readers to think critically and to stand up for what is right in the face of adversity.
3. Paterson's work is a reminder that we all have the power to make a positive difference in the world, no matter how small.