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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

Beverly Cleary

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

Children Giving Writing
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Childhood Known
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 feel sometimes that in children’s books there are more and more grim problems, but I don’t know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

Books Children People
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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Enjoy Thirds Writing
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Big Bigs Pests Sister
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
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

Children Happy Hope Readers
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
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
Children want to do what grownups do.
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Children Want Grownups
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.
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Mean Real Talent
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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Book Mother Wise
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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Book Father Mother
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
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 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 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 was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Bedtime Needs Writers
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

Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes