Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
BEVERLY CLEARYRamona 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.
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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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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.
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Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
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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.
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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.
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If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.
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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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Don’t stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don’t forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.
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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!
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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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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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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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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.
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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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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.
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