Kate DiCamillo Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.

Kate DiCamillo

Believe, Writing, Thinking
Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Kids, Writing
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Writing, Light
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.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Play, Pieces
I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Play, Scary

Interview with Eliza Borné, bookpage.com. September 2010.
One, we [with Alison McGhee] laugh a lot - that was great. Two, I enjoy writing, but it's a lonely undertaking. To have someone in the room with me is an absolute delight and makes it seem less impossible. It became a kind of comforting, joyful process.

Kate DiCamillo

Lonely, Writing, Two

"Q & A with Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee". Interview with Claire Kirch, www.teachingbooks.net. September 9, 2010.
On the return flight from my mother in Florida , I sat next to a businessman who asked me what I did for a living. I said, "I write," and it seemed totally ridiculous in the face of what had just happened. I mean, I couldn't think of anything more pointless than telling stories. He asked, "What do you write?" I said, "I write children books."

Kate DiCamillo

Mother, Children, Book

Source: www.teachingbooks.net
When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Thinking, Stories

TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.
Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Drawing, Childhood
I remember wanting to write a book with someone, the someone being Kate [DiCamillo], and we decided to write about two friends. We had no idea how to begin this project - neither of us had ever collaborated with another writer - and I'm pretty sure that we began by giving our two friends a sock, just to see what they'd do with it. And it went from there.

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Writing, Two Friends

Source: bookpage.com
When I do it [writing] by myself, there's a lot more terror and uncertainty.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Terror, Uncertainty

"Q & A with Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee". Interview with Claire Kirch, www.teachingbooks.net. September 9, 2010.
[A businessmen in plane after 9\11] asked me, "What are you working on now?" And I said I was writing a story about a mouse who tries to save a princess. I was mortified. Here the world is falling down around us, and I'm trying to tell the story about a mouse who saves a princess. I said "It doesn't matter at all now."

Kate DiCamillo

Princess, Fall, Writing

Source: www.teachingbooks.net
When I get to a point in my book writing when I don't know what I'm going to do next, I'll come back look at underlined passages and see if the images I wrote still have a certain amount of resonance for me.

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Writing, Looks

TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Rewriting, Screenplays
May God strike me down with a hammer on the head before I write a book with a teach-y goal!

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Writing, Goal

Source: bookpage.com
I think we sent Tony Fucile pictures of ourselves, photos from like when we were seven years old. That's what he worked from. He captured exactly what we looked like. I'd love to do another one with Alison, not just for the joy of writing, but also for the joy of watching Tony bring it to life with his illustrations. I'm hoping at BEA, or ALA, I'll get to meet Tony and shake his hand and thank him.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Thinking, Illustration

"Q & A with Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee". Interview with Claire Kirch, www.teachingbooks.net. September 9, 2010.
So here I am, sending a two-ounce mouse down into a dungeon with a sewing needle to save a human princess, and I don't know how in the world he's going to do it. I have no idea. That was the first time it occurred to me that writing the story was roughly equivalent to Despereaux's descent into the dungeon. I was tremendously aware of that as I was writing. I thought, "I have to be brave or else I'm not going to be able to tell it." But it's the only way that I can write. If I know what's going to happen, I'm not interested in telling the story.

Kate DiCamillo

Princess, Writing, Here I Am

Source: www.teachingbooks.net
I think I'm succinct to the point of trying to write the two-word novel. Editing my work almost never means taking anything out but rather adding, because I'm always stripping down. I tend to under-write rather than over-write.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Mean, Thinking

TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.
Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Attention, Pay Attention
For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

Kate DiCamillo

Children, Book, Writing

Source: bookpage.com
Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.

Kate DiCamillo

Notebook, Writing, Stories

Source: blog.booksamillion.com
As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Happens

TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.
When I was a kid I loved to read, but I didn't write and I didn't create imaginary worlds. So, if one student walks away thinking, "She's obviously just an ordinary person, yet she gets to make her living doing what she wants to do. Maybe that applies to me, too," then I feel like my time has been well spent.

Kate DiCamillo

Writing, Kids, Thinking

TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.
We [me and Alison McGhee] probably wouldn't have said that when we were writing the stories, but it is so apparent to me in the finished product. For me, looking at Bink, it's like looking at myself on the page in a way that I've never experienced with any other book that I've written.

Kate DiCamillo

Book, Writing, Stories

"Q & A with Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee". Interview with Claire Kirch, www.teachingbooks.net. September 9, 2010.
The words, "I have a dog named Winn-Dixie," popped into my head in the voice of a small girl with a southern accent. I'd been writing long enough at that point to know not to ignore that kind of red flag. The next day, I put aside what I'd been working on, started with that one sentence, and followed it all the way to the end.

Kate DiCamillo

Girl, Dog, Writing

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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Born: March 25, 1964
Occupation: Writer
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