Top 317 Quotes & Sayings by Kate DiCamillo
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Kate DiCamillo.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.
Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I'm having a good time. I can't really write anywhere else.
I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.
From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.
My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.
I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.
If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.
I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn't have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton, 'Paddington' by Michael Bond, 'A Little Princess' by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'Stuart Little' by EB White, 'A Cricket in Times Square,' all the Beverly Cleary books.
Happily, I had lots of childhood heroes.
Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.
I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.
I've always been a doodler.
When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that human beings wrote books. It was a kind of cognitive dissonance for me... I just didn't think it was something that people did.
I read a couple of books a week. About 80 percent of what I read is contemporary literature for adults. The other 20 percent is made up of non-fiction and children's books.
I was lucky enough to have a mother who took me to the library - the public library - twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And also bought me books. And also read aloud to me.
You have to learn how to write each book.
I am stuck at 10 years old. I think.
I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.
Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.
I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.
Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn't start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children's books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children's books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with them.
I'm not going to make judgments about what people are reading. I just want them to be reading. And I think reading one book leads to another book.
'Island of the Blue Dolphins' by Scott O'Dell had a huge impact on me.
To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.
I always wanted to be a character when I worked at Disney, but I wasn't short enough for certain characters, and I wasn't tall enough for others.
I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be talented. I just had to be persistent.
When I was 5 years old, I moved with my mother and brother from Philadelphia to a small town in Florida. People talked more slowly there and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am.' Everybody knew everybody else. Even if they didn't, they acted like they did.
So much of writing is like walking down a dark hallway with your arms out in front of you. You bump into a lot of things.
I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play.
Everything about writing is hard for me except for that - the names pop into my head. That's one of the reasons why I always make sure I have a notebook with me.
I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.
I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It's wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.
I have a part-time dog. I'm actually an aunt to a dog, and he's an awful dog, but I love him. He's only interested in doing what he wants to do.
My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.
I'm never impressed with myself!
I think our job is to trust our readers. I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen. I think our job is to love the world.
I get my inspiration from looking at the world and paying attention to people and just looking closely. Also from reading. I get so much inspiration from other authors.
We have this thing as human beings: we have a profound need for story. That's what kids need.
I was a very sickly kid and suffered from chronic pneumonia, which is why we moved to the warm southern climate. I think being ill contributed to my development as a writer. I learned early on to entertain myself by reading.
When you write for kids, people always ask you what lesson you mean to impart. I don't think adult writers get that question. I never mean to teach anybody a lesson, because I don't know anything myself.
When I was starting to write, I was fascinated with 'Knuffle Bunny' by Mo Willems. I remember taking it home and typing it out, trying to figure out how it worked. It's just a classic, with dauntingly few words.
I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.
I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.
I hate to cook and love to eat.
I didn't really start to write until I was almost 30, and I started with the short stories.
I have no talents. But I do have hope. And wonder. And love. Maybe those are talents?
I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.
My father - he was an orthodontist - was supposed to sell his practice and move down to Florida, but that never happened... I would sometimes spend the summer with him and visit him, but he never lived with us.
I have always been a reader. I was one of those kids desperate to learn. I would read anything.
I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.
I don't know what my mother was thinking, but she entered me in a Little Miss contest - Little Miss Orange Blossom, I think it was. And I don't remember anything about that, except I have one flash-bulb memory of standing on the stage and thinking, 'This is not where I should be.'
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
I like to think of myself as a storyteller.
I think hope and magic are probably connected.
Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.
I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have found what I am supposed to do and to get to do it.
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