Kate DiCamillo Quotes

Reading should be a pleasure, not a chore.

I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.

One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

Reading is looked at like it's corny or lame, but you'd be surprised what you can find in a book.

My passion for books has changed my life.

At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better

When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.

Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.

Reading was very important to me as a kid. It was very inspirational to me. I went to a school where that wasn't encouraged so much, but my parents encouraged that, and it has made me part of who I am.

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

If there's a 13- or 14-year old kid who is yearning for something beyond the social forces in his own world, in his own neighborhood, the library is the only place where he can go to find that. It was exciting and thrilling to me all the time I worked in the library. It's such a force for social good and it can do so much.

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.