Katherine Paterson Giving Quotations

Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.