Katherine Paterson Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

  Katherine Paterson

  Real, Writing, Order

  Katherine Paterson (2001). “The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children”, Dutton Juvenile

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

  Katherine Paterson

  Book, Writing, Fighting

• 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

  Writing, Heart, Ideas

• 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

  Taken, Writing, Looks

  Katherine Paterson (1981). “Gates of excellence: on reading and writing books for children”, Dutton Juvenile

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

  Katherine Paterson

  Children, Writing, Children's Literature

  Katherine Paterson (2011). “Read for Your Life #18”, p.22, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

  Katherine Paterson

  Writing, Love To Read

• 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

  Writing, Fiction, World

  Katherine Paterson (2001). “The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children”, Dutton Juvenile

• Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all.

  Katherine Paterson

  Husband, Writing, School

  Katherine Paterson (2001). “The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children”, Dutton Juvenile

• My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.

  Katherine Paterson

  Writing, Heart, Ideas

• 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

  Writing, Solitude, Trying

  Source: www.hbook.com

• 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

  Art, Writing, Past

• I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.

  Katherine Paterson

  Powerful, Book, Writing

  Source: www.hbook.com

• 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

  Hate, Book, Reading

  Katherine Paterson (2001). “The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children”, Dutton Juvenile

• What I really want to do is to write a hilarious farce.

  Katherine Paterson

  Writing, Farce, Want

  Source: www.hbook.com

• 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.

  Katherine Paterson

  Writing, Revision, Our Lives

• A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

  Katherine Paterson

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• 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

  Writing, Character, Prejudice

  Interview with Anna Umanskaya, www.nytimes.com. September 9, 2006.

• a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun.

  Katherine Paterson

  Strong, Writing, Ideas

• 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

  Art, Believe, Book

  Katherine Paterson (1981). “Gates of excellence: on reading and writing books for children”, Dutton Juvenile

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