Kate DiCamillo Quotes

Sadly, for those who are busy sawing off their feet to escape the trap of cliches, every story is chock full of them and sometimes depends on an especially hoary one.

Rules equal boredom, and I don't like that.

I don't like to make my life like a book.

It is unacceptable that the system we rely on to develop children into well-adjusted, learned, cultured adults allows drones to dominate and increasingly devalues freethinkers.

Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.

Work is the opposite of creativity.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.

As for discipline and rules, I confess, I've never been good with either.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

There is no course of life so weak and sotish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.

You're not going to reinvent the wheel every time you go out, because that would disappoint the audience.

I miss the simplicity of college, with specific due dates, a consistent schedule, and a solid routine.

I've always been kind of a play-by-the-rules girl; I tend to like things structured, predictable, and sometimes even a little boring.

Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life.

If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of and they will just follow our boarding school rules.

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become.

Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook.

Having children, you have so much more structure in your life. The open-endedness of being a single woman is gone, you know? It's sort of like, from 1 P.M. to 3 P.M. the kids are going to take a nap, so now I have time to sit down and write the lyrics, or once they're put to bed, I have a few hours to focus on those things. I need that. It's a very strange process, really - I can never predict what's going to happen. It always feels uncomfortable and awkward.

The little boy went first day of school He got some crayons and started to draw He put colors all over the paper For colors was what he saw And the teacher said.. "What you doin' young man?" "I'm paintin' flowers" he said She said... "It's not the time for art young man And anyway flowers are green and red There's a time for everything young man And a way it should be done You've got to show concern for everyone else For you're not the only one.

All kids, I think, are creative, but they get it pounded out of them in school.

Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It's calming.

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.