Top 100 Paterson Quotes
#1. I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?
Katherine Paterson
#2. Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures.
Katherine Paterson
#3. 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
#4. Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
Katherine Paterson
#5. He had promised Leslie that after Christmas he would stay home and fix up the house and plant his garden and listen to music and read books out loud and write only in his spare time.
Katherine Paterson
#6. And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.
A.B. Paterson
#7. If life is so bad, how come you're so happy?" "Did I say bad? I said it was tough. Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job, now is there?
Katherine Paterson
#10. But reality, as they say, bites. Chomps, even. Chews, mashes and swallows. And then spits out the bones at the end. The
Cecily Anne Paterson
#11. Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate.
Katherine Paterson
#12. God uses one whom others would have passed over without a second glance. The history of obedience to the Great Commission is full of such examples. Behind this reality is a truth that God will use any who will submit to and obey His purpose for mission in their generation.
Ross Paterson
#13. I enjoy getting to work on 'Saturday Night Live', where I get to do people like David Paterson. And then, its like a different muscle to do someone like a bicycle guy on' Portlandia'.
Fred Armisen
#14. There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.
Isabel Paterson
#15. The reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.
Katherine Paterson
#16. I stood there and watched thirty-five children disappear in almost as many different directions and was suddenly horrified by what I'd done. What if someone got lost or hurt? Suppose they didn't come back on time? What would I do then?
Katherine Paterson
#17. The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way.
Katherine Paterson
#18. Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.
Isabel Paterson
#19. Leslie was one of those people who sat quietly at her desk, never whispering or daydreaming or chewing gum, doing beautiful schoolwork, and yet her brain was so full of mischief that if the teacher could have once seen through that mask of perfection, she would have thrown her out in horror.
Katherine Paterson
#20. Shh," he said. "Look."
"Where?"
"Can't you see'um?" he whispered. "All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you."
"Me?"
"Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.
Katherine Paterson
#21. The work cannot be done without those who are willing to go out.
Ross Paterson
#22. If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.
Katherine Paterson
#23. Ordinary people who walk with an extraordinary God of grace and power, really can make a difference in other as yet unreached lives.
Ross Paterson
#24. Falling and flying are near identical sensations, in all but one final detail.
Don Paterson
#25. Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter,
Katherine Paterson
#26. Never throw away squeezed lemon, but keep them for the day by the sink. Then you can use them to remove fish, onion or garlic smells from your fingers. Or you can stick them on your elbows while you are reading a book, to soften and whiten your skin.
Jennifer Paterson
#27. After a long period of reflection, he decided that he was in fact right yet again.
Don Paterson
#28. The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.
Katherine Paterson
#29. In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.
Isabel Paterson
#30. Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything.
Isabel Paterson
#31. One of the novels that was hardest for me to write had to deal with the horrible slaughter of war. I almost didn't finish Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom for just that reason.
Katherine Paterson
#33. Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.
Katherine Paterson
#34. Sometimes you have to favor your heel, even if it means you're hurting your toe.
Katherine Paterson
#35. There was one path across Boston Commons that a young man must not ask a young woman to take unless he meant business. Which path was that? she asked Holmes. "Ah," she remembered the elderly doctor saying, "if I were only fifty years younger I would show you.
Katherine Paterson
#36. Newton was asked as a mathematician, not as a moralist. He replied 'Gentlemen, in applied mathematics, you must describe your unit.
Isabel Paterson
#37. Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution.
Owen Paterson
#38. The great truth is that women actually like men, and men can never believe it.
Isabel Paterson
#40. I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant.
James Hamilton-Paterson
#41. Jess followed, still trying to figure out why two grown people and a smart girl like Leslie wanted to leave a comfortable life in the suburbs for a place like this. They watched the bus roar off.
Katherine Paterson
#42. Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.
Katherine Paterson
#43. ...sometimes there are moments in your life that are more important than some of the other moments but that they can slip past you before you get a chance to look at them closely enough, the way a leaf sweeps past you in a river and disappears.
Donald Paterson
#44. Dammit, Trotter. Don't try to make a stinking Christian out of me.
Katherine Paterson
#47. 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
#48. The number of 'act ive ingredients' involved in the occupational therapy process make it difficult to identify or predict factors influential in achieving or hindering the outcome (Creek et al., 2005; Paterson and Dieppe, 2005
Anonymous
#49. No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.
Isabel Paterson
#50. Frank Sinatra told Floyd Paterson how he should whoop me. Frank Sinatra.
Muhammad Ali
#51. He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.
Katherine Paterson
#52. The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.
Isabel Paterson
#53. Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn.
Katherine Paterson
#54. If you wanted to greet him or get his attention, you had to say: "Oh, Mr. Forest-Ranger-who-stands-in-the-tower-watching-out-for-forest fires!" If you abbreviated it, or, heaven help us, addressed him simply as "David," you would get no response.
Katherine Paterson
#55. What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.
Katherine Paterson
#56. Daredevil nature as a young man. When I read what William Roth had written, I sighed. So that was where my own two boys had gotten the trait that was turning their mother's hair gray.
Katherine Paterson
#57. This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.
Katherine Paterson
#58. Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable."
Katherine Paterson
#59. Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.
Katherine Paterson
#60. I ain't got no blood claim on you, and the Lord in Heaven knows I want you to have a good life with your own people. But" - her huge bass voice broke up into little squeaky pieces - "but it's killing me to see you go.
Katherine Paterson
#61. All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a healing quality - a quality that enlarges our human spirits.
Katherine Paterson
#62. And I think that if I started to tell someone how I felt I'd never be able to stop so it's easier just to not feel anything because that way there's no issue.
Cecily Anne Paterson
#63. Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.
Isabel Paterson
#66. Lieutenant Governor Paterson - blind, black guy - gets sworn in. First thing he says is, 'By the way, cheated on my wife. Let's just get that out in the open right now.' He didn't need to admit that. He's blind. Could have said it was an accident.
Greg Fitzsimmons
#67. 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
#68. All my dreams of leaving, but beneath them I was afraid to go. I had clung to them, to Rass, yes, even to my grandmother, afraid that if I loosened my fingers an iota, I would find myself once more cold and clean in a forgotten basket.
Katherine Paterson
#69. Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.
Katherine Paterson
#70. Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
Katherine Paterson
#72. I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.
Katherine Paterson
#73. It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment.
Katherine Paterson
#74. Brenda's pouting voice broke in, Your girl friend's dead, and Momma thought you was dead, too.
Katherine Paterson
#75. I'm a great believer in research. I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place.
Katherine Paterson
#76. I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.
Katherine Paterson
#78. That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.
Katherine Paterson
#79. What is clear is that being a reader/fanboy (for lack of a better term) helped him get through the rough days of his youth, but it also made him stick out in the mean streets of Paterson even more than he already did.
Junot Diaz
#80. I'm scared of being seen. I'm scared of doing anything. I'm scared of losing another person who loves me. I'd rather just drift.
Cecily Anne Paterson
#81. Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.
Katherine Paterson
#82. An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.
Isabel Paterson
#83. As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.
Katherine Paterson
#84. Government can wreck a business by confiscating its money by taxation.
Owen Paterson
#85. I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.
Katherine Paterson
#86. I believe that teaching is a creative art in which evidence based knowledge is applied toward meeting the learning goals of learners. I believe that effective teaching is often the spark that ignites the imagination, possibility, and promise for learners, including the teacher.
Barbara Paterson
#87. The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.
Isabel Paterson
#88. Drive them out utterly, so they may never return and prey upon our people.
Katherine Paterson
#90. Well, we have to do something. There are all sorts of rumours about soldiers coming up."
"These people are full of rumours. They love rumours." Paterson stood watching the bridge. "Their whole life is a rumour.
H.E. Bates
#91. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
Isabel Paterson
#92. In each of the separate sections Mother would put a different treat - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sesame cookies, and peanuts.
Katherine Paterson
#93. I have had this desire my whole life to prove people wrong, to show them I could do things they didn't think I could do.
David Paterson
#94. Does he [the president] possess the power of making war? That power is exclusively vested in Congress ... It is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.
William Paterson
#95. Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.
Katherine Paterson
#96. I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.
Katherine Paterson
#97. 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
#98. You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.
Katherine Paterson
#99. Now the sole remedy for the abuse of political power is to limit it; but when politics corrupt business, modern reformers invariably demand the enlargement of the political power.
Isabel Paterson
#100. The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.
Katherine Paterson
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