Katherine Paterson Reading Quotations

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.

Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

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