Quotessence
Home / Authors / Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson

Katherine Paterson Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllBookWritingPeopleIfsChildrenThinkingKnowsImaginationGivingStoriesWorldReadingWayHeartIdeasLiteratureReaderWantArtLittles

Famous Katherine Paterson Quotes

“A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.”

WayMeanChildrenStoriesLiteratureLosesImaginationAliveGrowingReaderUniqueDancingTalesEncountersListenersGood StoryLivelyArrivalsSpiritedChildren's Literature
Author:Katherine Paterson
Create image

“a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun.”

WritingIdeasMatterStoriesGuyThreeStrongGrowsBornLinesNovelBearsRelationDiedComplexesUnconsciousChaptersSpidersTerrificSpunSpider Web
Author:Katherine Paterson
Create image

“I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.”

IfsWritingHumansHeartIdeasStoriesSoundMy OwnParticularReaderMy HeartDemandFleshSettingSettingsClothingsHuman Experience
Author:Katherine Paterson
Create image

“We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story. And somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone.”

TryingHeartMeanSelfStoriesTogetherLyingSecretReaderMy HeartCommunicate
Author:Katherine Paterson
Create image