Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson
Katherine Womeldorf Paterson is a Chinese-born American writer best known for children's novels. For four different books published 1975-1980, she won two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards. She is one of three people to win the two major international awards; for "lasting contribution to children's literature" she won the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 1998 and for her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" she won the Astrid Lindgren...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth31 October 1932
CityHuai'an, China
CountryUnited States of America
All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a healing quality - a quality that enlarges our human spirits.
If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.
He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.
The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos ...
One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.
This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.
a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.
It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.
The world that is in me is the only world I have by which to grasp the world outside and as I write fiction, it is the chart by which I must steer.
It was a wonderful way to be awakened.
A story is open-ended. A story invites you into it to make your own meaning.
All of us can think of a book that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf -- that work I abhor -- then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.
I like to write about a lot of things, which is why my books are different. This is probably why I don't like to write sequels, but chiefly I like to write about people.
I'm a great believer in research. I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place.