Katherine Paterson Quotes

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

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

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.

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."

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

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

...the long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, and you weren't yet where you were going. You were nowhere. It might be beautiful outside the window-and it was, she had sense enough to realize that-but it wasn't anywhere to her, just a scene passing by that was framed by the train window. (p160)