Jane Yolen Quotes

You know how it is: as soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

Papa wasn't like them, with lines like cursive writing up and down their faces.

He knew he was not a brave man, but he had a great sense of drama. In some circumstances it could seem the same. Forcing

A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.

Sometimes living takes more courage than dying.

If you love a waist, you waste a love.

But wanting and getting are hard neighbors and bitter friends.

Growth in the ability to write comes in spurts.

Touch magic. Pass it on.

You can only chase a butterfly for so long.

Write every day. You don't have to write about anything specific, but you should exercise your writing muscle constantly.

It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world ...

All around the castle, a briary hedge began to grow, with thorns as sharp as barbs.

If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.

Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends ... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.

Childrens books change lives. Stories pour into the hearts of children and help make them what they become.

It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.

Wanting to die and dying, she found were two separate things.

I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both.

Happy-ever-after is a fairy-tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive.

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.

The others are all common mouths chattering, empty heads like wooden whistles blowing common tunes.

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

He wishes to be far away, either at sea or on the shore. In between, he realizes, is the most difficult of all places to be.

Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.

Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.

And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she's ever going to be.

You've got some power," Jakkin said. "One hug - and the lights go out!

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya - life - to me.

There's only one absolute rule in writing: None of us gets it right the first time. Revise, reverse, reinvent, re-vision.

Not to know is bad, but not to wish to know is worse.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

I have pulled threads from magic tapestries already woven and used them to weave my own cloth.

What is a vow ... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?

I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.

I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.

All around me, grown-up voices called out, "Amen!" as if the word was a hall pass into Heaven.

You write to be read. That is the bottom line.

While I was in junior high, I wrote an entire essay in rhyme about manufacturing in New York State. In high school, I won a Scholastic poetry contest.

How often is the passing of one storm only a prelude to another.

What was can never be again.

If there is a single person at the nexus of fantasy literature, it is Terri Windling
as editor, as writer, as painter, as muse.

Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.

Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.

Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.

I must fill myself with sorrow if I am to give you what you want.

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing, the rest will follow.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.

Their lips were too thin to ask forgiveness, and their minds too mean to understand love.

For it began to occur to him that one way to become private was to respect another's privacy.

Fish are not the best authority on water.

Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.

The thing about endings is, they can begin quietly enough. That's how they sneak up on you.

Why am I working so hard? Going for 400 books, perhaps, but who's really counting?

Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.