Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Touch magic. Pass it on.
If you love a waist, you waste a love.
Exercise the writing muscle every day.
Fish are not the best authority on water.
You can only chase a butterfly for so long.
You write to be read. That is the bottom line.
Growth in the ability to write comes in spurts.
Sometimes living takes more courage than dying.
Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.
If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
How often is the passing of one storm only a prelude to another.
It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.
I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.
Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.
Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.
What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.
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.
I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.
If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.
I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.
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.
Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.
Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.
You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.
Write every day. You don't have to write about anything specific, but you should exercise your writing muscle constantly.
Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The main plot line is simple: Getting your character to the foot of the tree, getting him up the tree, and then figuring out how to get him down again.
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.
Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door.
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.
Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself.
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.
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.
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.
Intuition works best when you remember that “tuition” is part of it. You need to have paid ahead of time (ie done your prep work) so as to prepare the ground for intuition.
The tales of Elfland do not stand or fall on their actuality but on their truthfulness, their speaking to the human condition, the longings we all have for the Faerie Other.
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.
Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.
I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.
The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?