“I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn’t have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: ‘The Borrowers’ by Mary Norton, ‘Paddington’ by Michael Bond, ‘A Little Princess’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett, ‘Stuart Little’ by EB White, ‘A Cricket in Times Square,’ all the Beverly Cleary books.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“So much of writing is like walking down a dark hallway with your arms out in front of you. You bump into a lot of things.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“When I was starting to write, I was fascinated with ‘Knuffle Bunny’ by Mo Willems. I remember taking it home and typing it out, trying to figure out how it worked. It’s just a classic, with dauntingly few words.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“There’s this amplification that happens anytime you tell a story. You let it go out into the world. It’s the most beautiful thing. All I can do is look at it in wonder and amazement.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“How do I feel when I look back at prior work? Hmmm. I think, ‘I tried to do the best I could do. It’s not perfect. It will never be perfect.’ And then I think, ‘I want to try again.’”
― Kate DiCamillo
“From a cognitive standpoint, I’m very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I actually participated in a Little Miss Orange Blossom Contest when was I was seven or eight years old. I remember standing up on the stage and thinking, ‘Oh boy, I should not be here.’ Obviously, I didn’t win.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It’s wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I didn’t know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I didn’t start working on children’s books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children’s floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I hate to cook and love to eat.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I like to think of myself as a storyteller.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“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
“I’m at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I’m always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I’m never impressed with myself!”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I’m having a good time. I can’t really write anywhere else.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I get my inspiration from looking at the world and paying attention to people and just looking closely. Also from reading. I get so much inspiration from other authors.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I have always been a reader. I was one of those kids desperate to learn. I would read anything.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I always wanted to be a character when I worked at Disney, but I wasn’t short enough for certain characters, and I wasn’t tall enough for others.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I’ve always been a doodler.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“You have to learn how to write each book.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Everything about writing is hard for me except for that – the names pop into my head. That’s one of the reasons why I always make sure I have a notebook with me.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I didn’t really start to write until I was almost 30, and I started with the short stories.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I am stuck at 10 years old. I think.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Happily, I had lots of childhood heroes.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I read a couple of books a week. About 80 percent of what I read is contemporary literature for adults. The other 20 percent is made up of non-fiction and children’s books.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have found what I am supposed to do and to get to do it.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“’Island of the Blue Dolphins’ by Scott O’Dell had a huge impact on me.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I’m not going to make judgments about what people are reading. I just want them to be reading. And I think reading one book leads to another book.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I think our job is to trust our readers. I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen. I think our job is to love the world.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I have no talents. But I do have hope. And wonder. And love. Maybe those are talents?”
― Kate DiCamillo
“My father – he was an orthodontist – was supposed to sell his practice and move down to Florida, but that never happened… I would sometimes spend the summer with him and visit him, but he never lived with us.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I don’t know what my mother was thinking, but she entered me in a Little Miss contest – Little Miss Orange Blossom, I think it was. And I don’t remember anything about that, except I have one flash-bulb memory of standing on the stage and thinking, ‘This is not where I should be.’”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I think hope and magic are probably connected.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that human beings wrote books. It was a kind of cognitive dissonance for me… I just didn’t think it was something that people did.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“We have this thing as human beings: we have a profound need for story. That’s what kids need.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“When you write for kids, people always ask you what lesson you mean to impart. I don’t think adult writers get that question. I never mean to teach anybody a lesson, because I don’t know anything myself.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I have a part-time dog. I’m actually an aunt to a dog, and he’s an awful dog, but I love him. He’s only interested in doing what he wants to do.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Writing a novel isn’t like building a brick wall. You don’t figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you’re doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“When I was 5 years old, I moved with my mother and brother from Philadelphia to a small town in Florida. People talked more slowly there and said words I had never heard before, like ‘ain’t’ and ‘y’all’ and ‘ma’am.’ Everybody knew everybody else. Even if they didn’t, they acted like they did.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I was a very sickly kid and suffered from chronic pneumonia, which is why we moved to the warm southern climate. I think being ill contributed to my development as a writer. I learned early on to entertain myself by reading.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn’t start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children’s books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children’s books, and it wasn’t long before I fell in love with them.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids’ books: the illustrations.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I was someone who wanted to be a writer but who wasn’t writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“It’s such a potent thing, to be a kid. We grow up, and we don’t want to remember how everything is so beautiful and terrifying when we’re young. The older you get, the more you hope to muffle things.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Writing at home and then going out into the world to talk about why books matter to me feeds the writing. It’s a good mix. It provides balance.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don’t have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Everybody reading the same book at the same time pulls people together. It does start a conversation. If you’re going to read ‘The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,’ you’re going to talk about heartbreak and loss and all of those things that people don’t talk about as a community.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“There’s still, even now, a part of me that can’t believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It’s very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I was lucky enough to have a mother who took me to the library – the public library – twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And also bought me books. And also read aloud to me.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I decided a long time ago that I didn’t have to be talented. I just had to be persistent.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Whenever I am with a group of kids, I always ask them, ‘How many of you know about the summer reading program at your library and how many of you know it’s free?’ Spreading that sort of message comes very naturally to me.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“It’s a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Whether it is fear of having fish pie or staying in someone’s house or not being able to tell the time, all of those things I can remember very clearly. We so often forget how big all these things are for very small children because they are so often trying these things for the first time.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“How do you make your kids read more? It needs to be presented as a joy and a privilege to get to do it, and the kids should get to see you as a parent reading for your own pleasure. It’s not something you send your kids off to do, ‘Go into your room and read for 15 minutes or else.’ It becomes a task then.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“It wasn’t until my fifth or sixth book where I realized I’m trying to do the same thing in every story I tell, which is bring everybody together in the same room.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I find that when I write for children, I am more hopeful, less cynical. I don’t use different words or a different sentence structure. I just hope more.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“Progress is hard to measure in any creative endeavor, I think. It’s often a matter of instinct, of feeling your way through what works and what doesn’t.”
― Kate DiCamillo
“I can never tell if anything I do is really good. I’m always just slightly chagrined.”
― Kate DiCamillo
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