It's crazy isn't it?" She shook her head. "You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don't have to believe it, and I think it's beautiful." She shook her head again. "It's crazy.

— Katherine Paterson

I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.

— Katherine Paterson

Life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'kept maybe tough

— Katherine Paterson

Many people are angry when they make a mistake, but very few people have the sense to be sorry.

— Katherine Paterson

My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.

— Katherine Paterson

On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Bearer and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cram's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.

— Katherine Paterson

She wasn't scared of going deep, deep down in a world of no air and little light

— Katherine Paterson

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

— Katherine Paterson

The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way.

— Katherine Paterson

...the long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, and you weren't yet where you were going. Furthermore, you were nowhere. It might be beautiful outside the window-and it was, she had sense enough to realize that-but it wasn't anywhere to her, just a scene passing by that was framed by the train window. (p160)

— Katherine Paterson