Top 24 Quotes by Katherine Paterson

All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a healing quality - a quality that enlarges our human spirits.

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.

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.

A story is open-ended. A story invites you into it to make your own meaning.

I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.

I like to write about a lot of things, which is why my books are different. This is probably why I don't like to write sequels, but chiefly I like to write about people.

I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.

The best thing about being a writer is it gives you readers who understand your deepest feelings and fears.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.