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

• 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

• It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Children, Kids, Responsibility

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• If I am just home and writing, I become very strange.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Home, Writing, Strange

  Source: www.hbook.com

• I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Children, Writing, Philadelphia

• While we were working, we were writing about a tall girl and a short girl, which we thought was funny, because Alison's [McGhee] tall and I'm short.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Girl, Writing, Tall

  "Q & A with Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee". Interview with Claire Kirch, www.publishersweekly.com. September 9, 2010.

• The Tale of Despereaux came at the request of Luke, my friend's then-eight-year-old son, who asked, "Write for me the story of an unlikely hero with exceptionally large ears."

  Kate DiCamillo

  Hero, Writing, Son

  TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.

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