Quotes from Katherine Paterson

to my father's amazement, was an ancient but clearly recognizable painting of Marco Polo, who must have visited Huai'an during his thirteenth-century travels about China. The priest asked my father to donate a picture of Jesus for his collection, and, after thinking about it, Daddy did.

But I had never caused my parents 'a minute's worry'. Didn't they know that worry proves you care? Didn't they realize that I needed their worry to assure myself that I was something?

I feel very silly saying to you, Tell me all about yourself, but I wish you would. I want to get to know you. That's not how you get to know people. Don't you know? You can't talk it out, you've got to live into their lives, bad and good. You'll know me soon enough. What I want you to know.

I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.

She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn.

To blame were two young radicals, a country bumpkin named Mao Tse-tung and a disillusioned intellectual by the name of Zhou En Lai. These two had had the nerve to ask the owners of the mills to install safety devices so that the children and old people who worked long hours would no longer in their weariness lose fingers and even hands in the machinery.

There are no guarantees of success, much less of quality. If you don't dare to be a mediocre writer, you'll never be a writer at all.

I knew that day that as long as I lived I would remember that my mother had cared more about how her child felt than any cherished antique, and I resolved that if I ever had any children I would remember that scene. I must never forget that a child's feelings are always more important than any possession.

I see a land bright and clear And the time's coming near When we'll live in this land You and me, hand in hand.

reassigned to Zhenjiang

This story is about John, who was a private in the 2nd Georgia Battalion Infantry. I had always been told that John had taken part in Pickett's Charge, the bloody assault on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863. Actually he was mortally wounded very close to Cemetery Hill on July 2 the day before that tragic charge.

Intoxicated as he was with the heavens, he could not imagine needing anything on earth.

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

He nodded vigorously. Anything was better than promising to fight Janice Avery.

A colleague of hers had discovered that the Biblical sentence found in John 4:7 contained all the sounds in nearly every known language.

So we children must be thankful to the imperious Dr. Young for making it possible for our parents to meet and our subsequent births.

Whoever heard of a king who was scared of tall trees and a little bit of water?

If you wanted to greet him or get his attention, you had to say: "Oh, Mr. Forest-Ranger-who-stands-in-the-tower-watching-out-for-forest fires!" If you abbreviated it, or, heaven help us, addressed him simply as "David," you would get no response.

Sometimes...you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.

The Municipal Councils in these areas excluded Chinese members, and the police and civil servants were foreigners. Even the names of the streets reflected foreign imperialism—such as Jessfield Road, on which St. Faith's was located.

Cows...weren't like people, with feelings of lonesomeness and worrying about what might happen next. That was just people, wasn't it? Sure, you could scare a cow, but wouldn't they get over it as soon as you let them be? They didn't stand around fretting about the next scare and the next and the next.

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.

for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it. Because Mrs. Myers had helped him already by understanding that he would never forget Leslie. He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing—a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow

I stood there and watched thirty-five children disappear in almost as many different directions and was suddenly horrified by what I'd done. What if someone got lost or hurt? Suppose they didn't come back on time? What would I do then?