Don Paterson Quotes

#1. Right now it is a terrible thing to be a rugged individualist; but we don't know what else to be except a feeble nonentity.

Isabel Paterson

#2. Imagine your shadow burning off the page / As the dear world and the dead word disengage

Don Paterson

#3. 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.

Katherine Paterson

#4. I feel very silly saying to you, Tell me all about yourself, but I wish you would. I want to get to know you.
That's not how you get to know people. Don't you know? You can't talk it out, you've got to live into their lives, bad and good. You'll know me soon enough. What I want you to know.

Katherine Paterson

#5. Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.

Katherine Paterson

#6. Mediocre art is far worse than bad art. Bad art does not waste our time.

Don Paterson

#7. have to talk to Mr West. I'm sure he'll be able to help you.' 'We'll do that, Mrs Clegg,' replied Fitzjohn. 'Now, I don't want to keep you too much longer but Mr Van Goren arrived at the Observatory last evening in a taxi so I take it he didn't

Jill Paterson

#8. Poetry, unlike music, is a meta-art, and relies upon non-physical structures for the production of its effects. In its case, the medium is syntax, grammar and logical continuity, which together form the carrier-wave of plain sense within which its deeper meanings are broadcast.

Don Paterson

#9. 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.

Katherine Paterson

#10. It's crazy isn't it?" She shook her head. "You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don't have to believe it, and I think it's beautiful." She shook her head again. "It's crazy.

Katherine Paterson

#11. feeling of when you think you can never stop laughing and you think if you don't stop, you'll burst in half and that makes you laugh even more, thinking about bursting and then when you stop, you are so tired but it is such a happy tired.

Cecily Anne Paterson

#12. I don't care. I don't care". He was crying now, crying so hard he could barely breathe.

Katherine Paterson

#13. Anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only reconfirmed a prejudice.

Don Paterson

#14. It takes the best part of a lifetime to find out what you don't want.

Isabel Paterson

#15. You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.

Katherine Paterson

#16. We could easily have evolved eyelids thick enough to keep out the light, but we still need to see the shadows fall across them. We're not yet safe.

Don Paterson

#17. The problem with people who are afraid of imagination, of fantasy, is that their world becomes so narrow that I don't see how they can imagine beyond what their senses can verify. We know from science that there are entire worlds that our senses can't verify.

Katherine Paterson

#18. I don't believe too much in originality ... you learn art from other art and then looking into somebody's face or landscape is the point of departure to do your work of art.

Paterson Ewen

#19. Floyd Paterson and other fighters, they just don't take part.They make a million dollars, they get a Rolls Royce and a nice home and a white wife and think, 'well, I made it'.

Muhammad Ali

#20. Falling and flying are near identical sensations, in all but one final detail.

Don Paterson

#21. After a long period of reflection, he decided that he was in fact right yet again.

Don Paterson

#22. Dammit, Trotter. Don't try to make a stinking Christian out of me.

Katherine Paterson

#23. Critics all have this idea that authors inhabit another dimensional realm, right up to their first smack in the mouth - which feels to them quite miraculous, being their sex-dream come true.

Don Paterson

#24. We turn from the light to see.

Don Paterson

#25. I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.

Katherine Paterson

#26. Fate's book, but my italics.

Don Paterson

#27. Win was flabbergasted when he heard me say to the dog: We don't put our paws on the table while folks are eating, Manch.

Katherine Paterson

#28. When I'm invisible I don't have to feel anything. The pain and grief and fear goes away. I go numb and quiet.

Cecily Anne Paterson

#29. The aphorism is already a shadow of itself.

Don Paterson

#30. No fury more righteous than that of a sinner accused of the wrong sin.

Don Paterson

#31. We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds ... We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

Katherine Paterson

#32. I can see exactly what not to do at the moment. No doubt through the usual process of elimination I'll arrive at my favourite strategy of total paralysis.

Don Paterson

#33. You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

Katherine Paterson

#34. Don't tell me no one ever gave you a chance. You don't need anything given to you. You can make your own chances. But first you have to know what you're after, my dear.

Katherine Paterson

#35. Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.

Don Paterson

#36. The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.

Don Paterson