Novelist James Patterson to ϲʿ’s Class of 2015: ‘Be dreamers and doers’
Contact: Sasha Steinberg
![“Please dream big,” international best-selling and award-winning author James Patterson urged the more than 1,300 graduates during Friday’s [Dec. 11] fall commencement ceremonies at ϲʿ.](/sites/www.msstate.edu/files/inline-images/Graduation_JamesPatterson_20151211_4RH8291.jpg "“Please dream big,” international best-selling and award-winning author James Patterson urged the more than 1,300 graduates during Friday’s [Dec. 11] fall commencement ceremonies at ϲʿ.")
STARKVILLE, Miss.—“Please dream big,” international best-selling and award-winning author James Patterson urged the more than 1,300 graduates during Friday’s [Dec. 11] fall commencement ceremonies at ϲʿ.
“Make sure you have a dream when you leave Mississippi State and have a backup dream. When I was kid, right through high school and into college, my dream was to play basketball in the NBA. I could dunk. I was pretty good. It didn’t happen, but I had a backup ,” Patterson said.
“I loved to write stories, and I went at the craft of storytelling with passion and perseverance and kind of obsessive stubbornness. My first novel was published when I was 26,” he added. His fictional novels have now sold more than 300 million copies.
Currently holding the Guinness World Record for the most No. 1 New York Times best-sellers of any author and the first to achieve 10 million e-book sales, the New York native also is the fir