Quotes from Katherine Paterson

It had never occurred to Jess that parents were meant to be understood any more than the safe at the Millsburg First National was sitting around begging him to crack it.

daredevil nature as a young man. When I read what William Roth had written, I sighed. So that was where my own two boys had gotten the trait that was turning their mother's hair gray.

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

I had no study in those days, not even a desk or file or bookcase to call mine alone....It might have happened sooner [the writing of work worthy of publication] had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who took away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.

Jess wouldn't argue that, but he saw her as a beautiful wild creature who had been caught for a moment in that dirty old cage of a schoolhouse, perhaps by mistake.

Sometimes you have to favor your heel, even if it means you're hurting your toe.

They gave Jesse all of Leslie's books and her paint set with three pads of real watercolor paper.

Self-censorship can be very damaging to a story. When our chief goal is not to offend someone, we are not likely to write a book that will deeply affect someone.

Dammit, Trotter. Don't try to make a stinking Christian out of me.

We need a place, just for us. It could be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it. It might be a whole secret country, and you and I could be the rulers of it.

They decided they were too hooked on money and success, so they bought that old farm and they're going to farm it and think about what's important.

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....

In each of the separate sections Mother would put a different treat—sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sesame cookies, and peanuts.

The moral, of course, is that you must always try to see other people's Point of View before you criticize anybody. Histories are crammed full of unkind things, silly things, and untrue things—why? Because so often the people who write them will not try to see or feel any Point of View but their own...So mind that you always look out for the Point of View and help people to see yours, too, if you want them to understand you.

He thought later how peculiar it was that here was probably the biggest thing in his life, and he had shrugged it off as nothing.

The idea of living in the same house for all your childhood and having the same knot of devoted friends seemed magical to me, who had lived in thirteen different places by the time I was thirteen.

We must have received our share of startled looks from the crew and other passengers—this seven-member family emerging from their third-class lower deck and climbing into a waiting chauffeur-driven limousine.

supposed to be OK again to like peace

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

She jerked to life, her eyes wide open. "Why did that woman give me away?" Then it all began to pour out. Why had she been given away? We'd never told her she was a foundling.

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.

The infamous "Rape of Nanking" that occurred not long afterward, just 102 miles farther north, tells a story of what might have happened at my childhood home were it not for that commander.

St. Faith's, as she called her compound, was financed entirely by donations, some from friends abroad and some from admiring Chinese benefactors.