Patricia Polacco

"I don't know if my work is a concerted effort to make kids sad! But life and death go hand in hand. It's our condition as human beings."

"I don't know if my work is a concerted effort to make kids sad!"

"I didn't learn to read until I was almost 14 years old. Reading out loud for me was a nightmare because I would mispronounce words or reconstruct things that weren't even there. That's when one of my teachers discovered I had a learning disability called dyslexia. Once I got help, I read very well!"

"When you come from a family of storytellers, you're doomed. You just have to tell stories."

"Until we learn to honor and respect what other people believe, I think we are doomed."

"Genius is neither learned nor acquired. It is knowing without experience. It is risking without fear of failure. It is perception without touch. It is understanding without research. It is certainty without proof. It is ability without practice. It is invention without limitations. It is imagination without boundaries. It is creativity without constraints. It is...extraordinary intelligence!"

"You were born with the power to change others. You change people by the way you treat them. That is what changes the human heart."