Kate DiCamillo Quotes

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It's very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me.

There is no right or wrong way to tell a story. You have to find your own way. You can get your idea from listening, looking, or imagining. Stories are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention.

My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.

My art feels like it's real disobedient. I can fill notebooks with observations and maybe they find their way into the work unconsciously, which is great. I've never been able to directly plug, like to take a little snip that I've picked up on the street and transfer it into a story. I don't know what's wrong, but it never works that way.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

Everything's a film idea if this is what you do.I've always been secretly confident that I'd never run out of ideas,because I've never had any. I just live my life, see things theway I do, and I'm just looking for a notion to hang it all on.

I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.

You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves.

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination. If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can't forget it-it will haunt you till it's written.

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

It's not just about acting. I love film, I'm a director now, I love writing, I love producing, I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don't let me sleep at night.

Sometimes I'll hear a phrase or a word and write it down in my little black notebook (a writer's best mate), then come back to it and work a plot around it.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

I have an ideas book at home with far more ideas than I will ever be able to write.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

I feel like I have so many stories basting in my mind, and they come busting out when they're ready.

That's how I make work. Along the way, I take notes, I read about history and popular culture. Sometimes I act out things in the studio. I go back to my mother's hair salon so I can hear three voices going all at once. I pull inspiration from everything.

So, the combination of looking at lots of different people and how they react to each other and how they relate to each other and waiting for that inspiration is the thing that allows me to keep writing.

I am always looking for material - whether for my notebooks or for Twitter or Instagram - which means I'm looking for meaning.

Whenever I'm out and I hear something, I'm writing. It's the process of writing it down and then just always creating wherever you go. I never stop creating.