Kate DiCamillo Quotes

There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.

It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.

The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart.

You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.

If you have no intention of loving or being loved, the whole journey is pointless.

Reader, do you think it is a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since,in the end, it really makes no difference to anyone but you?

And hope is like love...a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.

The world is dark, and light is precious.
Come closer, dear reader.
You must trust me.
I am telling you a story.

We forget that the simple gesture of putting a book in someone's hands can change a life. I want to remind you that it can. I want to thank you because it did. - 2010 Indies Choice Award

Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end...

Magic is always impossible. It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That's why it is magic.

Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.

Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.

There is nothing worse than war in the summetime.

Alfred T. Slipper was a janitor. Most of the time (often, in fact) they treated him with disdain. They had no idea of the astonishing acts of heroism, the blinding light, contained within his outward humdrum disguise.

Only Alfred's parakeet, Dolores, knew who he was and what he could do.

The sound of the king's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.

Normally, Edward would have found intrusive, clingy behavior of this sort very annoying, but there was something about Sarah Ruth. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do more for her. (page 135)

There," she said. She rocked him back and forth. "There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?

Furlough?” He said.
“What?” said the first hood irritably.
Despereaux shuddered. His own brother was delivering him to the dungeon. His heart stopped beating and shrunk to a small, cold, disbelieving pebble.