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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

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

Ballerina Changed Mind
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
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Fairy Tales Great Library
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Different Rummage Sales Shoes
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Mean Real Talent
I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Giving Writing
She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Girl Interesting Waiting
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Helping Teacher
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
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
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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Cousin Memories Mother
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Childhood Known
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Only Child Sister
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Father Mother

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