Top 41 Patricia MacLachlan Quotes
#2. Some words may make you happy, some may make you said. Maybe some will make you angry. What I hope ... what I hope is that something will whisper in your ear.
Patricia MacLachlan
#3. I want most of all for you to forgive Grandfather. I want you to forgive Grandfather so I can grow up and be just like you.
Patricia MacLachlan
#4. You have a story in there, Lucy," she said, touching my head. "Or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word," she whispered.
Patricia MacLachlan
#5. Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing.
Patricia MacLachlan
#6. Life is made up of circles ... Life is not a straight line ... And sometimes we circle back to a past time. But we are not the same. We are changed forever.
Patricia MacLachlan
#7. I sing the songs I sang to you every night.
I sing them
so I will remember you,
hoping that you will remember me too,
even though I am here,
and you are there.
Patricia MacLachlan
#8. In a way, my childhood was one long bunch of pages ... I read and read and read.
Patricia MacLachlan
#10. Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all just gone out the door.
Patricia MacLachlan
#11. I'm working on a bunch of things with my daughter Emily. In some ways, she's a smarter and better editor than I am.
Patricia MacLachlan
#12. I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off ... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'
Patricia MacLachlan
#13. Sometimes poetry
words
give us a small, lovely look at ourselves. And sometimes that is enough.
Patricia MacLachlan
#14. You will have a story in there ... or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word.
Patricia MacLachlan
#16. My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.
Patricia MacLachlan
#17. My mother, as a girl, had remembered this woman from Maine, someone who was part of the extended family somehow, and I recall her talking about this great, risk-taking woman. There are the most amazing, heroic stories in everybody's lives.
Patricia MacLachlan
#18. I think what happens is you write how you grew up. And I was born on the prairie, and so everything is kind of spare on the prairie. And so I'm just used to writing in that way. 'Sarah, Plain and Tall' was that way. And most of my fiction is. I like writing small pieces. Somehow it just suits me.
Patricia MacLachlan
#19. In Moonlight
No
Soft sweet paw on my cheek
No
Fur curled under my chin
Just
A sad space left behind -
Gray cat gone away.
[Ellie's poem]
Patricia MacLachlan
#20. Being married to a psychologist, I realize that I learn more from imperfections.
Patricia MacLachlan
#21. There are some things for which there are no answers, no matter how beautiful the words may be.
Patricia MacLachlan
#22. Sadness is
Steam rising
Tears falling
A breath you take in
But can't let out
As hard as you try.
Patricia MacLachlan
#23. I love to talk to children about making mistakes. It's important that I tell them about how I don't get it right the first time. We live in such a perfectionist society, and they see so many finished products and polished performances.
Patricia MacLachlan
#24. I think it's important to remember where I began. I know that when I talk to other writers, say, writers from the South or writers from abroad, it's where they begin as children that is important to them.
Patricia MacLachlan
#26. Sometimes you think you know more than you really do - people, events, things that are true and things that are not. Sometimes you think you know yourself. But then, surprise, it is someone else who shows you what is really there, like the truth a photograph shows.
Patricia MacLachlan
#27. My brother William is a fisherman, and he tells me that when he is in the middle of a fogbound
sea the water is a color for which there is no name.
Patricia MacLachlan
#28. I have great editors, and I always have. Somehow, great editors ask the right questions or pose things to you that get you to write better. It's a dance between you, your characters, and your editor.
Patricia MacLachlan
#29. I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall.
Patricia MacLachlan
#30. What is perfect? Journey, a thing doesn't have to be perfect to be fine. That goes for a picture. That goes for life ... Things can be good enough.
Patricia MacLachlan
#31. There are always things to miss," said Maggie. "No matter where you are.
Patricia MacLachlan
#32. All the world can be found in poetry. All you need to see and hear. All the moments, good and bad, joyous and sad.
Patricia MacLachlan
#37. I can always tell when I'm about to start writing. I go through cycles in reading. When I'm beginning to start to write something, I start reading what I think of as good literature. I read things with wonderful language.
Patricia MacLachlan
#38. I never work from an outline, and often I don't know how the story will end.
Patricia MacLachlan
#39. Byrd: It is important because we are giving her something to take away with her when she goes.
Lalo: What will she take with her?
Byrd: Us.
Sophie: And what will we have when she's gone?
Byrd looked at Sophie and shook her head because she couldn't speak
Patricia MacLachlan
#40. Poets and children," said Sylvan. "We are the same really. When you can't find a poet, find a child. Remember that.
Patricia MacLachlan
#41. I have great respect for children. And I have great respect for their ability as writers.
Patricia MacLachlan
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