A biography for Beverly Clearyhasn’t been written yet.
“I'm just lucky. I do have very clear memories of childhood. I find that many people don't, but I'm just very fortunate that I have that kind of memory.”
“Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.”
“I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.”
“I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.”
“Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.”
“In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!”
“We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.”
“I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.”
“People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.”
“I rarely read children's books.”
“I was a librarian.”
“Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus' pestering little sister.”
“I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.”
“I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country, so we miss museums and the bustle of city life.”
“I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.”
“I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood.”
“I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra. They really cared about children and they wore pretty dresses.”
“I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.”
“I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.”
“I wrote books to entertain. I'm not trying to teach anything! If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book.”