268 Quotes by Katherine Paterson

We are not wise enough, we adults, to know what book will be right for any child at any particular moment, but the richer the book, the more imaginative, the more emotionally true, the more beautiful the language, the better the chance that it will minister to a child’s deep, inarticulate fears.

No,” I said primly, I had no intention of being a writer because “I wouldn’t want to add another mediocre writer to the world.

I got up the nerve to ask her if she remembered that first visit and my terrible faux pas. She pretended, in true Japanese fashion, that it had never happened.

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.

Like God in the Bible, they looked at what they had made and found it very good.

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.

Parents were what they were; it was not up to you to try to puzzle them out.

She looked at him as if she were going to argue, then seemed to change her mind. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.” She shook her head again. “It’s crazy.

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