Top 317 Quotes & Sayings by Kate DiCamillo - Page 5

The only control you have over a movie is whether or not you decide to sell the rights.

Reading might not be the way that the child engages with the world, but it should be something that they all learn how to do, and that they get to have for themselves, as opposed to somebody telling them what to do and how to do it.

I've been recognized in airports lots of places, but mostly getting recognized is at home.

There's a notion of art in this country that you have to be nutty or special or "called" in order to be an artist. I believe the questions everyone should ask themselves are, "Do you want to do it? Are you willing to do it poorly? Are you willing to do the work of doing it? Are you willing to persist when everybody tells you it's silly?" If you're willing to do that, then you can do it.

To me the book is like having a kid. I have to let it go out in the world, and great things will happen. Maybe they won't, but it has to keep on moving.

Minnesota has been so good to me and so pleased that I love Minnesota.

I think for everybody reading can be a solace, illumination, education.

I never want to be a role model.

I actually do like traveling.

I'm just doing what I've done my whole life, which is talking to people about books and making them read. It's what I do in my friendships. "Here, you have to read this, you have to read this."

This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.

There's nothing more fabulous than an adult saying to you, "I think that you might like this one [book]." So I'm grateful every time that happens. It's an amazing thing that people care that passionately.

I read whatever the publisher sends me.

I think, oh my god, kids are reading, and they care about a book enough to come over and talk to me about a book that they care about. If I think about it as being a celebrity, it would freak me out. But I just think, lucky me, that I get to be a part of this whole thing.

That you can go anywhere in America and get a book from a library is just the most amazing thing in the world. It's not a duty; it's a privilege and it's a joy. That joy is doubled and tripled and quadrupled if you read with other people.

I'm grateful for every teacher or librarian who reads a book and says, "This is exactly the book that so-and-so needs to read; I'll get it in his hands." I'm amazed at the network of adults who make sure that kids get books.

I don't think about being a celebrity.

I have not Googled myself. I have not looked at myself on Amazon. It could drive you wild.

No matter how hard you try to be present at home, you're always doing the things that you have to do.

Nobody ever learns anything.

Going out and not only meeting the kids, but meeting the teachers and the librarians and seeing the world, fills me up.

Everything when I was a kid was illustrated.

[Our first dinner with Alison McGhee] was at Figlio's [in Minneapolis]. I know exactly what I had, because it was so good: their three-cheese ravioli. But I can't remember what I said to Alison that night that made her laugh so hard. But she got me right away and I got her right away.

I think that that's part of how people have responded to The Tiger Rising. It's what I call my dark child. It's gotten sandwiched in between two overachieving, tap-dance-performing kids - Winn-Dixie and Despereaux.

I think we sent Tony Fucile pictures of ourselves, photos from like when we were seven years old. That's what he worked from. He captured exactly what we looked like. I'd love to do another one with Alison, not just for the joy of writing, but also for the joy of watching Tony bring it to life with his illustrations. I'm hoping at BEA, or ALA, I'll get to meet Tony and shake his hand and thank him.

Miracles and magic pervade the things that I've written, but yet there are no miracles and there is no magic.

May God strike me down with a hammer on the head before I write a book with a teach-y goal!

If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn't always, Kate [DiCamillo] and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio's restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting - always a good sign.

I was over at Alison's [McGhee], I think we were playing Scrabble. I remember we were both complaining - yeah, we sound like whiners - about how hard writing is, and how we didn't have a story to work on. Alison said, 'Why don't we work on writing something together,' and I said, 'Eh, I don't know if I could work that way.' She said, 'Well, just show up here and we'll see,' and I said, 'Well, what would it be about?' She said, 'Duh, it'd be about a tall girl and a short girl.' So I agreed to come and try it for a day.

What's my weirdest adventure? Yikes, there've been so very many. Perhaps the pig+vegetable+Taiwanese-army-guys boat ride to the island off the coast of Taiwan qualifies as the weirdest. Or at least the most seasick.

I am really an introvert, and I need that time alone for a variety of reasons.

What I hope is that the book [Bink & Gollie] delights children. What I hope is that they laugh and laugh and laugh, just as we did when we wrote them.

It's a book [Bink & Gollie] about shortness and tallness, so I think it's appropriate to discuss the virtues of shortness.

We [me and Alison McGhee] probably wouldn't have said that when we were writing the stories, but it is so apparent to me in the finished product. For me, looking at Bink, it's like looking at myself on the page in a way that I've never experienced with any other book that I've written.

I would hesitate to say the characters [ in Bink & Gollie] are too related to either to us [me and Alison McGhee], but they certainly draw on our physical traits and personality traits and then exaggerate them to the nth degree.

Love is in all of the books, and that's the connective tissue between them. There's a lot of hope in me; I can feel it. These stories are balls of light for me.

While we were working, we were writing about a tall girl and a short girl, which we thought was funny, because Alison's [McGhee] tall and I'm short.

If I am just home and writing, I become very strange.

It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.

The way we started was, Alison [McGhee] said, 'Tall girl, short girl.' We had no plans beyond that.

I always go to the Agriculture Building, where they make apple cider popsicles for a dollar.

When I do it [writing] by myself, there's a lot more terror and uncertainty.

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 wanted to be a chipmunk; I think 4'10" was the cutoff.

In my stories for children, I sometimes show a hard, harsh, dangerous world. I'm going to show you the way it is, but I'm going to also tell you that there's every reason to hope.

The Tiger Rising is, again, about a motherless child. His name is Rob Horton. He is dealing with the death of his mother, when he and his father move to a new town. And two things happen the same day that Rob gets sent home. One is he meets a girl named Sistine Bailey, who is what my mother would call "a piece of work," and he finds a real tiger in a cage in the woods behind the motel where he lives with his dad. And that's the story: what happens with the Sistine tiger, the real tiger and Rob's grief.

When it is my editor telling me how to rewrite a story, I listen and do what she asks because I have learned that I get a better book in the end. I can't say I'm happy when I read that editorial letter. It is always a little painful and scary. But I have learned that - bit by bit - I can make the changes and do the work.

Mercy Watson is pure fun for me as a writer, because I think of her as kind of sorbet - a palate cleanser - between larger works. It's always a relief to come back to her.

I'm in trouble if they can't, because everyone's taller than me, and if that's true, that means I can't have any friends! Alison [McGhee] and I look very much like, I was going to say Bink and Gollie, but I meant Mutt and Jeff. We look ridiculous when we walk down the street together, because she's so tall and I'm so short. But yes, tall people and short people can, and should be, friends. I, personally, like being short. I think it makes things easier.

I love adventurous travel. I also love pancakes, and making pancakes for other people. You would definitely find me in the airy treetop as opposed to below ground.

The image I had was very clear, and so in that way The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane began like other books.

So, yes, at least from my end. You could say there's a lot of Alison [McGhee] in Gollie too.

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.

I need to write, and I can't write when I'm on the road.

Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.

Nothing new ever happens in the books. It's the same old theme.

You don't realize what you're going to get, and you can't prepare yourself for it.

I think Tony Fucile, who did the illustrations [for Bink & Gollie], is an absolute genius. I've never met him.

A friend of mine said Winn-Dixie is the way that people want the world to be and Tiger Rising is the way that it is.

As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.