Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I rarely read children's books.
Children want to do what grownups do.
I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
I read my books aloud before they were published.
I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
I don't ever go on the Internet. I don't even know how it works.
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.
If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood.
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.
Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
I think adults sometimes don't think about how children are feeling about the adult problems.
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.
People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country, so we miss museums and the bustle of city life.
She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
Don't stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don't forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.
With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.
We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.
I'm just lucky. I do have very clear memories of childhood. I find that many people don't, but I'm just very fortunate that I have that kind of memory.
I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
I wrote books to entertain. I'm not trying to teach anything! If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book.
I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.
Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.
Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.
I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time.