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 work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Coffee, Writing, Thinking

• Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Writing, Interest, Wanted

• We were 15 minutes into it and nothing was happening; I thought, well, that's not going to work. Then all of a sudden everything clicked. I don't know how long it took us, but I would just show up at Alison's [McGhee] office. She would type and we'd just kick it back and forth. Writing is so scary for me, such a lonely endeavor, and it became a wonderful thing to show up and have somebody else go through it with me. It was actually a wonderful experience.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Lonely, Writing, Long

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

• I was visiting my mother in Florida when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened. I was working on The Tale of Despereaux at that point. I had already gone into writing it with a great deal of trepidation and fear, and then this God-awful thing happens and it was really hard to even get back home to Minneapolis.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Mother, Home, Writing

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

• I journal for about half an hour, and by the time that's done, the business day on the East Coast has begun. The phone starts to ring, and the rest of the day is spent dealing with the business of writing. My workday is done at about 3:00.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Writing, Phones, East

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

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