If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.
Katherine PatersonRead
We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story. And somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how storytelling expresses deep emotions and connects people.
Katherine Paterson emphasizes the profound nature of storytelling, illustrating how narratives can convey feelings that are often inexpressible with words alone. By sharing stories rooted in personal experiences, both the storyteller and the reader engage in a unique collaboration, uncovering truths from their innermost selves that result in a shared understanding and connection that transcends individual expression.
Themes
StorytellingConnectionEmotionHeartCollaboration
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, when discussing the importance of personal narratives.
More from Katherine Paterson
All quotes →It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment.
Katherine PatersonRead
She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.
Katherine PatersonRead
Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.
Katherine PatersonRead
The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.
Katherine PatersonRead
The best thing about being a writer is it gives you readers who understand your deepest feelings and fears.
Katherine PatersonRead
Similar quotes
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Elias CanettiRead
I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.
P. G. WodehouseRead
I was kind of thrown into - I didn't expect to do this for a living, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world.
John PrineRead
I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningRead
The real biographies of poets are like those of birds, almost identical - their data are in the way they sound. A poet's biography lies in his twists of language, in his meters, rhymes, and metaphors.
Joseph BrodskyRead
I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art
Sol LewittRead