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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.

Beverly Cleary

In seventh grade…I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Library Seventh
With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Chance Reading
I read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Publisher Read
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Mean Real Talent
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom – there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
I don’t necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that’s most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Imagination Stories
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Before Grew Law Strict
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Reading Teacher
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Bedtime Needs Writers
If we finished our work, the teacher would say, ‘Now don’t read ahead.’ But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Reading Teacher
In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!
BEVERLY CLEARY

School Ships Years
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Fairy Tales Great Library
If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Know Librarians Should
I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Inspiring Mother
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Only Child Sister

I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.

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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes