Kate DiCamillo Quotes

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

I came up with a story and I wrote it.

As I'm writing it, I'm kind of curious to see what's going to happen. It almost feels like I'm the writer and I'm the listener, too.

Sometimes, when you're writing sentence by sentence, you're not really sure what footprints you're going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.

When I start writing a new imaginary future, I have no idea what it is. The characters arrive first. They help me figure out where they are living and I get to fill in the gaps with that and where we are. So when I get to the end of the process of composition, if I feel that I have really done my job, I have no idea what I've got - and I then spend essentially the rest of my life figuring out what it might mean.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.

Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on edge, on your toes. It is a strange way to occupy yourself - to enjoy your life on a daily basis. There is no guarantee that something great is going to come next.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

I had been writing since I was pretty small, and I've always been telling these stories about doors and finding other worlds within our own.

I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

I was a voracious reader and I could never understand why comics were of any less merit or importance than any other way of writing. I think the thing that keeps me with comics is there's still so much to be done. There's still this huge unplowed field, this huge unexplored wilderness, and as long as I can keep doing new things and coming up with new things, I will.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

When I write new worlds, I work in layers, building and throwing out, and building anew.

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

You're a writer. Make it up.

The only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.

Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.

There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write