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I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

Beverly Cleary

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
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Children People
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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Before Grew Law Strict
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents’ Night.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Burton Father Imagination Mother Real Step
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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Book Want Writing
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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Bedtime Needs Writers
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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Able Ideas World
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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Ballerina Changed Mind
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.
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Father Mother People
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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Big Bigs Pests Sister
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.
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Book Chance Reading
The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else–grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.
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Boys Grief Humilation Perhaps Regret Turned
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.
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Book Library Seventh
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 hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

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I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes