I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARYI wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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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.
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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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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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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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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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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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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.
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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.
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I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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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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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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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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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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She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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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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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 wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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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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