Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
Beverly Cleary

Children want to do what grownups do.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
Beverly Cleary

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
Beverly Cleary

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
Beverly Cleary

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
Beverly Cleary

I read my books aloud before they were published.
Beverly Cleary

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
Beverly Cleary

I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
Beverly Cleary

I was a librarian.
Beverly Cleary

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
Beverly Cleary

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
Beverly Cleary

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
Beverly Cleary

One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.
Beverly Cleary

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
Beverly Cleary

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.
Beverly Cleary

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
Beverly Cleary

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
Beverly Cleary