Quotes from 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.

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a healing quality - a quality that enlarges our human spirits.

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

I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.

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.

Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.

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.

A story is open-ended. A story invites you into it to make your own meaning.

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.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

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.