Kate DiCamillo Quotes

Love!' said the princess. She stamped her foot. 'Why must everyone always speak of love?

It seems to be that way with most things. No one to do the really disagreeable jobs except oneself.

But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.

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.

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.

The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time.

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 didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

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.

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.

I hate to cook and love to eat.

Reading is my passion.

Holly McGhee said I should come to dinner with them. That first dinner, I said something pretty smart-alecky, and Alison [McGhee] laughed really hard at it. It made me happy.

There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart...And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.

I have learned how to love. And it's a terrible thing. I'm broken. My heart is broken. Help me.

Things are not at all what they seem to be: oh no, not at all.

Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact think the world is very funny. And they are right, dear reader. They are right.

You are down there alone, the stars seemed to say to him. And we are up here, in our constellations, together.

The Tale of Despereaux is the story of an unlikely hero, a mouse, who falls in love with a princess and then must save her. It's a triumph of the human spirit, via a mouse.

As far as books getting turned into movies, I fared very, very well.

We all live in fear of getting blocked no matter what kind of art we're trying to do. It happens all the time, but I prefer to think of it as a bad day.

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

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

The Tale of Despereaux came at the request of Luke, my friend's then-eight-year-old son, who asked, "Write for me the story of an unlikely hero with exceptionally large ears."

It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.

There is nothing worse than war in the summetime.

We forget that the simple gesture of putting a book in someone's hands can change a life. I want to remind you that it can. I want to thank you because it did. - 2010 Indies Choice Award

Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.

This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.

There ain't no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.

We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?

And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.

I love words; I love the way they sound. Once I've worked on everything else, the last drafts of my books come down to how they sound.

Go home and read to your adult. We forget how much we love to be read to.

Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

Fairy tales dont tell you that dragons are real, but that they can be defeated!

Most of my books begin with an image or a voice - one small thing - and I don't know what it is going to become.

As a kid books changed how I looked at the world and helped me understand things. Books still deepen me and open my heart.

I was a kid who lived to read. It was the primary pleasure of my existence. It's still one of the primary pleasures of my existence. It's where I draw my sustenance.

Mercy Watson was a character that had been in my head for a long time.

There are so many difficult things and stories can make them palatable. That's the way I have always felt.

Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing. And a ridiculous thing, too.

Reading a story should be a fabulous, wonderful thing. The most important thing that parents can do for kids is to read with them and to let their kids see them reading books for their own pleasure.

What would make me happiest is if kids read these books [Bink & Gollie] and think: there is so much to love in the world; and words are so much fun.

I am just always, always paying attention - waiting for the words, or image, or name that will be the beginning of a story.

When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about.

I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.

Do you think everybody misses somebody? Like I miss my mama?” “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. She closed her eyes. “I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.

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.

Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible.