Top 200 Kate DiCamillo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.”

— Kate DiCamillo

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Encouraging Quotes for Students, Reading Quotes, Quotes About Childhood

2. “Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.”

— Kate DiCamillo

3. “Say it, reader. Say the word ‘quest’ out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn’t it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.”

— Kate DiCamillo

4. “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”

— Kate DiCamillo

5. “When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.”

— Kate DiCamillo

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

— Kate DiCamillo

7. “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.”

— Kate DiCamillo

8. “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.”

— Kate DiCamillo

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

9. “There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.”

— Kate DiCamillo

10. “I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing.”

— Kate DiCamillo

11. “I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.”

— Kate DiCamillo

12. “There ain’t no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.”

— Kate DiCamillo

13. “How can you make a beautiful ending without making beautiful mistakes.”

— Kate DiCamillo

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

— Kate DiCamillo

15. “Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.”

— Kate DiCamillo

16. “You can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.”

— Kate DiCamillo

17. “I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.”

— Kate DiCamillo

18. “As they walked back to the Kentucky Star, Rob thought about what Willie May had said about the tiger rising on up. It reminded him of what she had said about his sadness needing to rise up. And when he thought about the two things together, the tiger and his sadness, the truth circled over and above him and then came and landed lightly on his shoulder. He knew what he had to do.”

— Kate DiCamillo

19. “Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains. And spools of thread.”

— Kate DiCamillo

20. “It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.”

— Kate DiCamillo

21. “I’m at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.”

— Kate DiCamillo

22. “You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.”

— Kate DiCamillo

23. “Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.”

— Kate DiCamillo

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

— Kate DiCamillo

25. “Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.”

— Kate DiCamillo

26. “Sometimes there are no reasons. Often, most of the time, there are no reasons. The world cannot be explained.”

— Kate DiCamillo

27. “This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying.”

— Kate DiCamillo

28. “But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, “I forgive you, Pa!” And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.”

— Kate DiCamillo

29. “Perhaps what matters when all is said and done is not who puts us down but who picks us up.”

— Kate DiCamillo

30. “We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”

— Kate DiCamillo

31. “Once, oh marvelous once, there was a rabbit who found his way home.”

— Kate DiCamillo

32. “We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.”

— Kate DiCamillo

33. “He must, he realized, know somewhere, deep inside him, more things than he had ever dreamed of.”

— Kate DiCamillo

34. “No one cared what she wanted. No one had ever cared. And perhaps, worst of all, no one ever would care.”

— Kate DiCamillo

35. “You are the ever-expanding universe to me.”

— Kate DiCamillo

36. “I hate to cook and love to eat.”

— Kate DiCamillo

37. “Love is ridiculous. But love is also wonderful. And powerful. And Despereaux’s love for the Princess Pea would prove, in time, to be all of these things: powerful, wonderful, and ridiculous.”

— Kate DiCamillo

38. “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love witha dog who has a good sense of humor.”

— Kate DiCamillo

39. “I have done quite a few signings at bookstores, libraries and conferences. I have received phone calls and letters from people who liked the book.”

— Kate DiCamillo

40. “So many miracles have not yet happened.”

— Kate DiCamillo

41. “Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted.”

— Kate DiCamillo

42. “If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.”

— Kate DiCamillo

43. “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.”

— Kate DiCamillo

Featured in: Reading Quotes

44. “This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.”

— Kate DiCamillo

45. “Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.”

— Kate DiCamillo

46. “Every action, reader, no matter how small, has a consequence.”

— Kate DiCamillo

47. “That was the thing about tragedy. It was just sitting there, keeping you company, waiting. And you had absolutely no idea.”

— Kate DiCamillo

48. “But in truth,′ said Bull, ’we are going nowhere. That my friend, is the irony of our constant movement.”

— Kate DiCamillo

49. “I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.”

— Kate DiCamillo

50. “If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.”

— Kate DiCamillo