Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Beverly Cleary

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Beverly Cleary.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Beverly Atlee Cleary was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. One of America's most successful authors, 91 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950. Some of her best known characters are Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse.

American - Author | Born: April 12, 1916

Source: Wikipedia

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

Beverly Cleary

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

Beverly Cleary

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

Beverly Cleary

In 50 years, the world has changed, especially for kids, but kids' needs haven't changed. They still need to feel safe, be close to their families, like their teachers, and have friends to play with.

Beverly Cleary

Children want to do what grownups do.

Beverly Cleary

I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time.

Beverly Cleary

We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.

Beverly Cleary

I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college.

Beverly Cleary

Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus' pestering little sister.

Beverly Cleary

I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

Beverly Cleary

I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.

Beverly Cleary

I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed.

Beverly Cleary

I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood.

Beverly Cleary

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.

Beverly Cleary

I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.

Beverly Cleary

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

Beverly Cleary

Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England and because they are written with an economy of words as if they were written with a pen instead of a computer. Penelope Fitzgerald is a favorite.

Beverly Cleary

I don't ever go on the Internet. I don't even know how it works.

Beverly Cleary

I wrote books to entertain. I'm not trying to teach anything! If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book.

Beverly Cleary

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

Beverly Cleary

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.

Beverly Cleary

'Dear Mr. Henshaw' came about because two different boys from different parts of the country asked me to write a book about a boy whose parents were divorced, and so I wrote 'Dear Mr. Henshaw,' and it won the Newbery, and I was - it's been very popular.

Beverly Cleary

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

Beverly Cleary

I'm just lucky. I do have very clear memories of childhood. I find that many people don't, but I'm just very fortunate that I have that kind of memory.

Beverly Cleary

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

Beverly Cleary

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

Beverly Cleary

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

Beverly Cleary

Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

Beverly Cleary

I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra. They really cared about children and they wore pretty dresses.

Beverly Cleary

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

Beverly Cleary

I rarely read children's books.

Beverly Cleary

I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.

Beverly Cleary

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.

Beverly Cleary

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

Beverly Cleary

I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country, so we miss museums and the bustle of city life.

Beverly Cleary

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.

Beverly Cleary

I think adults sometimes don't think about how children are feeling about the adult problems.

Beverly Cleary

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.

Beverly Cleary

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

Beverly Cleary

I was a librarian.

Beverly Cleary

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.

Beverly Cleary

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

Beverly Cleary

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Beverly Cleary

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

Beverly Cleary

I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.

Beverly Cleary

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

Beverly Cleary

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.

Beverly Cleary

I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

Beverly Cleary

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!

Beverly Cleary

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.

Beverly Cleary

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.

Beverly Cleary

Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.

Beverly Cleary

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

Beverly Cleary

As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.

Beverly Cleary

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

Beverly Cleary

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt. [...] The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake

Beverly Cleary

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

Beverly Cleary

Don't stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don't forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.

Beverly Cleary

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

Beverly Cleary

Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.

Beverly Cleary

Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Beverly Cleary

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