Jane Yolen Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Jane Yolen

  Childhood, Literature, Disease

  51 Copy quote

• Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Athlete, Character

  42 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Children, Life Changing, Book

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Perfect, Get Better

  18 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Song, Art, Giving

  15 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Book, Worn It, May

  23 Copy quote

• All writers write about themselves, just as the old storytellers chose to tell stories that spoke to and about themselves. They call it the world, but it is themselves they portray. The world of which they write is like a mirror that reflects the inside of their hearts, often more truly than they know.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Heart, Mirrors

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

  14 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Writing Love

  18 Copy quote

• Get up from your desk and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed at desk level.

  Jane Yolen

  Needs, Levels, Get Up

  8 Copy quote

• I believe that culture begins in the cradle . . .To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future.

  Jane Yolen

  Stars, Book, Believe

  3 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Ideas, Hard

  14 Copy quote

• What makes a good book? Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time.

  Jane Yolen

  Book, Heart, Critics

  8 Copy quote

• I have always been jealous of artists. The smell of the studio, the names of the various tools, the look of a half-finished canvas all shout of creation. What do writers have in comparison? Only the flat paper, the clacketing of the typewriter or the scrape of a pen across a yellow page. And then, when the finished piece is presented, there is a small wonder on one hand, a manuscript smudged with erasures or crossed out lines on the other. The impact of the painting is immediate, the manuscript must unfold slowly through time.

  Jane Yolen

  Jealous, Artist, Impact

  9 Copy quote

• The magical story is not a microscope but a mirror, not a drop of water but a well. It is not simply one thing or two, but a multitude. It is at once both lucid and opaque, it accepts both dark and light, speaks to youth and old age.

  Jane Yolen

  Dark, Mirrors, Light

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

  9 Copy quote

• Exercise the writing muscle every day.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Exercise, Muscles

  10 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Important, Helping, Language

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

  12 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Want, Talent

  10 Copy quote

• Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the one's that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.

  Jane Yolen

  Lying, Voice, Stories

  12 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Exercise, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jane Yolen

  Heart, Mouths, Vow

  4 Copy quote

• We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.

  Jane Yolen

  Long, Gone, Stories

  6 Copy quote

• A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.

  Jane Yolen

  Dark, Men, Light

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

  3 Copy quote

• Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.

  Jane Yolen

  Years, Essence, Water

  Jane Yolen (2016). “Sister Light, Sister Dark”, p.15, Open Road Media

  3 Copy quote

• A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?

  Jane Yolen

  Children, Book, Dark

  7 Copy quote

• But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She's been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason... Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning.

  Jane Yolen

  Memories, Past, Hair

  6 Copy quote

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