Katherine Paterson

Novelist

1932-10-31

Katherine Paterson is an American novelist known for children's and young-adult literature, including Bridge to Terabithia. She is a two-time Newbery Medal winner.

Books by Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia
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Lyddie
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Jacob have I loved
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Quotes by Katherine Paterson

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied
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Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.
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The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else's life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn't been able to see before.
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All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.
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You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.
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Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography,but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
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You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.
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You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.
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Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied
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Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography,but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
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All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.
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You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.
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The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else's life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn't been able to see before.
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Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.
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If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?
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The problem with people who are afraid of imagination, of fantasy, is that their world becomes so narrow that I don't see how they can imagine beyond what their senses can verify. We know from science that there are entire worlds that our senses can't verify.
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Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
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Some say it is the elements of hope and wonder in children's books that make them special. But there are many dark young adult novels these days. Adults loved Harry Potter, though it was written for the young. In the end, it is probably up to the reader of any age to decide if this book is for him or her.
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I love writing for young adults because they are such a wonderful audience, they are good readers, and they care about the books they read.
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Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
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