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" I was someone who wanted to be a writer but who wasn't writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing. "

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" 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. "

Kate DiCamillo

Reading

Best

Children

" 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 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. "

" I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It's very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me. "

Kate DiCamillo

Think

Mystery

" 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 think of myself as an enormously lucky person. "

" I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head. "

" 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 was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them. "

" 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.' "

Kate DiCamillo

Think

Thinking

" Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one? "

" Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift. "

" To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations. "

Kate DiCamillo

Great

Writing

" In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic. "

" If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible. "

" Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness. "

Kate DiCamillo

Light

Wilderness

" 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. "

Kate DiCamillo

Never

Kid

" I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

Kate DiCamillo

Time

Good

" 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. "

" I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children. "