Katherine Paterson Quotes

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

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

~ Katherine Paterson

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

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

~ 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

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

~ Katherine Paterson

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

~ Katherine Paterson

The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way.

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

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

Many people are angry when they make a mistake, but very few people have the sense to be sorry.

~ Katherine Paterson

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.

~ Katherine Paterson

She wasn't scared of going deep, deep down in a world of no air and little light

~ Katherine Paterson

The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

~ Katherine Paterson

...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.

~ Katherine Paterson

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

~ 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