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Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

Beverly Cleary

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Able Ideas World
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Mean Real Talent
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
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Ballerina Changed Mind
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
If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Know Librarians Should
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Childhood Known
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Enjoy Thirds Writing
When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Patience Reading Teacher
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Children Grow Up
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 have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother’s cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Cousin Memories Mother
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Big Bigs Pests Sister
We didn’t have television in those days, and many people didn’t even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Father Mother People
Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Boys Friendship
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Mother Wise

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

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Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes