Kate DiCamillo Quotes

Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver's hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS! drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren't careful. So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver. And he held on tightly back.

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.

Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact think the world is very funny. And they are right, dear reader. They are right.

Where had Mrs. Borkowski's should gone?

(p. 139)

I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing.

Pascal," said Dr. Meescham, "had it that since it could not be proven whether God existed, one might as well believe that he did, because there was everything to gain by believing and nothing to lose. This is how it is for me. What do I lose if I choose to believe? Nothing!"
"Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible.

It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.

READING SHOULD NOT BE PRESENTED TO CHILDREN AS A CHORE OR A DUTY. IT SHOULD BE OFFERED TO THEM AS A PRECIOUS GIFT.

Despereaux marveled at his own bravery.
He admired his own defiance.
And then, reader, he fainted.

I have brought you half of my pancakes," said Gollie.
"And I have removed one of my outrageous socks," said Bink. "It's a compromise bonanza!

They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was sure that he had read exactly those words time and time again.
Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting ... Despereaux had a sudden, chilling thought: Had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after?

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.

We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.

Reader, you may ask this queston. In fact, you must ask this question. Is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, big-eared mouse fall in love with a beautiful princess named Pea? The answer is..
Yes. Of course it's ridiculous.
Love is ridiculous.
But love is also wonderful. And powerful.

You are down there alone, the stars seemed to say to him. And we are up here, in our constellations, together.

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

And that, after all, is how it ended.

Quietly.

In a world muffled by the gentle, forgiving hand of snow.

Know to be a safe port in a storm? Flora suddenly remembered her dream, how warm William Spiver's hand had felt in her own. She blushed. Whom did she trust? Good grief, she trusted William Spiver.

He was agitated for some reason that he could not name. (page 35)

A what? said Willie May.

Look at me, he said to her. His arms and legs jerked. Look at me. You got your wish. I have learned how to love. And it's a terrible thing. I'm broken. My heart is broken. Help me. The old woman turned and hobbled away. Come back, thought Edward. Fix me

Magic is always impossible ... It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it's magic.

And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said. (page 69)

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.

She were forced to describe it, she would say that it tasted exactly like squirrel: fuzzy, damp, slightly nutty. Have you lost your

I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.

It was a singular sensation to be held so gently and yet so fiercely, to be stared down at with so much love.

Love!' said the princess. She stamped her foot. 'Why must everyone always speak of love?

Reader, do you believe that there is such a thing as happily ever after? Or, like Despereaux, have you, too, begun to question the possibility of happy endings?

To have someone get out of bed and bring you little fishes and sit with you as you eat them in the dark of night. To hum to you. This is love.

The rabbit felt dizzy. He wondered for a minute, if his head had cracked open again, if he was dreaming.
"Look, Mama," said Maggie, "look at him."
"I see him," said the woman.
She dropped the umbrella. She put her hand on the locket that hung around her neck. And Edward saw then that it was not a locket at all.
It was a watch. It was his watch.
"Edward?" said Abilene.
Yes, said Edward.
"Edward," she said again, certain this time.
Yes, said Edward, yes, yes, yes.
It's me.

He was a squirrel. Could he be a superhero, too?

My heart, thought Edward, my heart is broken.

This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying.

Fairy tales dont tell you that dragons are real, but that they can be defeated!

So much happiness!" said Dr. Meescham. "This is how it was when I was a girl in Blundermeecen. Like this. Always opening the door in the middle of the night and finding the face of someone you wanted to see. Well, not always. Sometimes it was the face of someone you did not want to see.
But always, always in Blundermeecen, you opened the door because you could not stop hoping that on the other side of it would be the face of someone you loved." Dr. Meescham looked at William Spiver and then at Tootie. She smiled. "And maybe, too, the face of someone you did not yet know but might come to love.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.

Because that is what it means to be alive, on this infinitesimally spinning planet. It means you have cares. Doesn't it?

But, alas, he never really belonged in either place, the sad fate, I am afraid, of those whose hearts break and then mend in crooked ways.

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.

Never in his life had Edward been cradled like a baby. Abilene had not done it. Nor had Nellie. And most certainly, Bull had not. It was a singular sensation to be held so gently and yet so fiercely, to be stared down at with so much love. Edward felt the whole of his china body flood with warmth. (page 128)

Her words sounded the way all those things made him feel, as if the world, the real world, had been punched through, so that he could see something wonderful and dazzling on the other side of it.

That squid is a villain," said Flora out loud. "He needs to be vanquished. He's eating a boat. And he's going to eat all of the people on the boat."
"Yes, well, loneliness makes us do terrible things," said Dr. Meescham. "And that is why the picture is there, to remind me of this. Also, because the other Dr. Meescham painted it when he was young and joyful."
Good grief, thought Flora. What did he paint when he was old and depressed?

Perhaps," said the man, "you would like to be lost with us. I have found it much more agreeable to be lost in the company of others.

All things are possible. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every other day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I'm saying? Even when it didn't happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.

There is somebody who loves me," said Despereaux. "And I love her and that is the only thing that matters to me.

Did Rob make it?" Sistine asked Willie May. "He did," said Willie May. "It looks alive. Is it like your bird that you let go?

Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end ...

Sometimes, when the light starts to fade, I get a terrible feeling of loneliness, like maybe I am the only person in the world.

The human heart was dark beyond all reckoning; it also likened the heart to a river. And further, it said, If we are not careful, that river can carry us along in its hidden currents of want and anger and need, and transform each of us into the very criminal we fear.

When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about.

Tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be. When I told Gloria Dump about Otis and how he got arrested, she laughed so hard she had to grab hold of her false teeth so they wouldn't fall out of her mouth.

Who can say what astonishments are hidden inside the most mundane being?

Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains. And spools of thread.

Rob sat out on the curb in front of the motel room and waited for Sistine to come back from using the phone.

Go ahead, Marlene, thought Edward. Push me around. Do with me as you will. What does it matter? I am broken. Broken.

Sometimes the pain in her heart made her feel too terrified to go on. Sometimes it made her want to drop to her knees.
But then she would remember that she had a plan.

I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.

HE WILL BECOME KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS ULYSSES! Holy

And he discovered, finally, the source of the honey-sweet sound.
The sound was music.
The sound was King Phillip playing his guitar and singing for his daughter, the Princess Pea, every night before she fell asleep.
Hidden in a hole in the wall of the princess's bedroom, the mouse listened with all his heart. The sound of the King's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.
Oh," he said, "it sounds like heaven. It smells like honey.

You, friend, are on a quest." "I don't know what that is," said Despereaux. "You don't have to know. You just have to feel compelled to do the thing, the impossible, important task at hand.

He allowed his brother to lead him to his fate.

Despereaux looked at his father, at his grey-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad.
"Forgive me," said Lester again.
Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.
Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse ever could forgive anyone for such perfidy?
But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."
And he said those words because he sensed it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

I am alone in the world, Dolores, and I am homesick for my own kind.

He must, he realized, know somewhere, deep inside him, more things than he had ever dreamed of.

But, reader, there is no comfort in the word "farewell," even if you say it in French. "Farewell" is a word that,in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.

But she couldn't help it. She did hope. She was hoping. She had been hoping all along.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

Oh, my goodness," said Louisiana. "I'm just all filled up with feathers and regrets. And fears. I have a lot of fears.

And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.

The world was beautiful. It surprised me, how beautiful it kept on insisting on being. In spite of all the lies, it was beautiful.

He felt a wonderful certainty. The impossible, he thought, the impossible is about to happen again.

Do not hope; instead, observe were words that Flora, as a cynic, had found useful in the extreme. She repeated them to herself a lot.

What is?', he said. 'What if?' is a question that belongs to magic.

This malfeasance must be stopped, said Flora in a deep and superheroic voice.

He let the light from the upstairs world enter him and fill him. He gasped aloud with the wonder of it.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

If every babe who cried were still alive, well, then, the world would be a very crowded place, indeed.

smiled back. Winn-Dixie

Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.

If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.

I intended only lilies. That was my intention: a bouquet of lilies. - The Magician

Perhaps what matters when all is said and done is not who puts us down but who picks us up.

But I'm not ready to let Winn-Dixie go.

I have been loved, Edward told the stars. So? said the stars. What difference does that make when you are all alone now?

Flora had decided that this was part of the reason her parents had divorced. Not the noise of the writing, but the writing itself. Specifically, the writing of romance. Flora

I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.

And he told himself, reader, that it was the cloth that he desired and not the light.

SEASONS PASSED, FALL AND WINTER and spring and summer. Leaves blew in through the open door of Lucius Clarke's shop, and rain, and the green outrageous hopeful light of spring. People came and went, grandmothers and doll collectors and little girls with their mothers. Edward Tulane waited. The seasons turned into years. Edward Tulane waited. He repeated the old doll's words over and over until they wore a smooth groove of hope in his brain: Someone will come; someone will come for you.

If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn't always, Kate [DiCamillo] and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio's restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting - always a good sign.

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.

The sound of the king's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.

Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

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.

But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.

There's no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next." "I am done with being loved," Edward told her. "I'm done with loving. It's too painful." "Pish," said the old doll. "Where is your courage?" "Somewhere else, I guess," said Edward. "You disappoint me," she said. "You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now.

READ. You have no business wanting to be a writer unless you are a reader. You should read fantasies and essays, biographies and poetry, fables and fairy tales. Read, read, read, read, read.

I love your round head,
the brilliant green,
the watching blue,
these letters,
this world, you.
I am very, very hungry.

How many times, Edward wondered, would he have to leave without getting the chance to say goodbye?

At the thought of being eaten by rats, Despereaux forgot about being brave. He forgot about not being a disappointment. He felt himself heading into another faint. But his mother, who had an excellent sense of dramatic timing, beat him to it; she executed a beautiful, flawless swoon, landing right at Despereaux's feet.