Jane Yolen Quotes

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. ~ Jane Yolen

Hans was never good at giving proper answers. He always had different answers in his head, odd answers, answers that his teachers and his parents and his grandmother and even his crazy grandfather seemed to think were wrong. But they weren't wrong answers, they were just his answers. He wondered suddenly what the Ice Maiden would do if he gave her a wrong answer. And, thinking this, he found he couldn't open his mouth at all. ~ Jane Yolen

Even her powders and face paint couldn't disguise the age lines and gripe lines that ran as deep as the railway tracks some said were bound to cross our mountain any day so. ~ Jane Yolen

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing, the rest will follow. ~ Jane Yolen

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 ~ Jane Yolen

Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing ... If you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous - which is very different. ~ Jane Yolen

Could it be that humans had an infinite capacity to make themselves at home in the direst of situations? Or did one just adjust expectations downward, so as to be able to get through each day? ~ Jane Yolen

You may adore Love You Forever, but I hear it as a story about an overbearing and smothering mother who infantilizes her son and can only tell him she loves him when he is fast asleep. I also contend that she drugs his cocoa. And that when the man's baby daughter wakes up sixteen years later and finds him fondling her in her room, she will be calling 911 and going into therapy. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

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

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

JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life:

1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her?

2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details?

3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill?

Or do as many mothers before you did - just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent.

Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-school R-rated movies easily accessed on the TV, not to mention the Starr Report!

In the days of fairy tales, sex was dangerous because so many women died in childbirth. Today sex is again dangerous because of diseases like AIDS. So what do we say? ~ Jane Yolen

My beloved husband goes through radiation, and a book of sonnets is my passionate response. And then after he dies, I write another book of poems as a farewell. The two keywords here are passion and joy. I simply have a passion for writing, and I do it with joy. ~ Jane Yolen

The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream. ~ Jane Yolen

Shit is another useful word. Also very common. For example, pleasantly surprised? You say 'No shit?' You think someone tells you tales, you scoff 'You're shitting me.' You find something you like very much, you exclaim 'That's good shit! ~ Jane Yolen

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

If he failed, it was with honor.
In his name we all dwell
in Camelot

Long after the towers fall,
and merlins nest
in the ruined stones. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems like I've been writing since birth! I started writing poems before I got to school. I wrote the class musical in first grade - both words and music. It was about a bunch of vegetables who got together in a salad. I played the chief carrot! ~ Jane Yolen

Now you must close your eyes. Yes, that is it. Selinda, you, too. Good. Good. Bring in the dark that I may teach you to breathe. For it is breath that is behind words. And words that are the shapers of knowledge. And knowledge that is the base of understanding. And understanding, the link between sister and sister." And ~ Jane Yolen

Passover isn't about eating, Hannah," her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers through her silver-streaked hair. "You could have fooled me," Hannah muttered. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

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

Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love ... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish. ~ Jane Yolen

Growth in the ability to write comes in spurts. ~ Jane Yolen

Part of her revolted against the insanity of the rules. Part of her was grateful. In a world of chaos, any guidelines helped. And she knew that each day she remained alive, she remained alive. One plus one plus one. The Devil's arithmetic ... ~ Jane Yolen

From Taking Your Clothes to the Salvation Army:
Okay, so strangers will be grateful for this, will wear the socks to keep their feet warm, blow their noses in your handkerchiefs, pull up the shorts, tuck in the size large shirts (too small for our boys, too big for our daughter), and bits of you will be out there, engaging in a life you no longer have. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

Words shouldn't be dirty or clean
But definitely sweet,
On the tongue, in the mind. ~ Jane Yolen

The storyteller in me asks: what if? And when I try to answer that, a story begins ~ Jane Yolen

What was can never be again. ~ Jane Yolen

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. ~ Jane Yolen

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. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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. ~ Jane Yolen

I do not know where I am going or what I will do when I get there. I know only that to put one foot in front of the other, moves me on, away from you to a place, where I do not want to be. ~ Jane Yolen

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

In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good. ~ Jane Yolen

A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teacher and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years. ~ Jane Yolen

Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks. ~ Jane Yolen

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

[W]hen the modern mythmaker, the writer of literary fairy tales, dares to touch the old magic and try to make it work in new ways, it must be done with the surest of touches. It is, perhaps, a kind of artistic thievery, this stealing of old characters, settings, the accoutrements of magic. But then, in a sense, there is an element of theft in all art; even the most imaginative artist borrows and reconstructs the archetypes when delving into the human heart. That is not to say that using a familiar character from folklore in the hopes of shoring up a weak narrative will work. That makes little sense. Unless the image, character, or situation borrowed speaks to the author's condition, as cryptically and oracularly as a dream, folklore is best left untapped. ~ Jane Yolen

1. Write every day
2. Write what interests you.
3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.)
4. Write with honest emotion
5. Be careful of being facile
6. Be wary of preaching
7. Be prepared for serendipity
Finally I would remind you of something that Churchill told a group of school boys: Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up. ~ Jane Yolen

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

If a parent wants to talk about slavery or wants to talk about countries where bombs go off, they need to have a way - a setting - to have that conversation. And there are wonderful books out there for those kinds of conversations. ~ Jane Yolen

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

Beauty Sleep

Wake up, princess, time to rise.
Open up your dreamy eyes.
Never mind the prince or kiss.
By no means were you raised for this.
Take the plot back from the witch.
Kick her spindle in the ditch! ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

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

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

Not to know is bad, but not to wish to know is worse. ~ Jane Yolen

I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up. ~ Jane Yolen

My youngest son becomes an award-winning nature photographer, and I cannot resist writing poems to his pictures. My daughter loves to cook, though I do not. Yet together, we write a cookbook with fairy tales. And now a second. ~ Jane Yolen

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. ~ Jane Yolen

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

He was always being sent away from place to place for lying. The problem was, he never lied. He simply saw truth differently from other folk. On the slant. ~ Jane Yolen

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

It is winter now,
and the roses are blooming again,
their petals bright against the snow.
My father died last April;
my sisters no longer write,
except at the turning of the year,
content with their fine houses
and their grandchildren.
Beast and I
putter in the gardens
and walk slowly on the forest paths.
[from the poem, Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary] ~ Jane Yolen

Don't ever write just for a trend or fad, because it's a moving target, and by the time you get your work out there, the trend or fad is gone. Dig deep; don't be afraid to write fiercely. Expose your heart. ~ Jane Yolen

A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul. ~ Jane Yolen

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

Cinderella, until lately, has never been a passive dreamer waiting for rescue. The forerunners of the Ash-girl have all been hardy, active heroines who take their lives into their own hands and work out their own salvations ....
Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent decisions, for she knows that wishing solves nothing without concomitant action. We have each been that child. (Even boys and men share thatdream, as evidenced by the many Ash-boy variants.) It is the longing of any youngster sent supperless to bed or given less than a full share at Christmas. And of course it is the adolescent dream.
To make Cinderella less than she is, an ill-treated but passive princess awaiting her rescue, cheapens our most cherished dreams and makes a mockery of the magic inside us all - the ability to change our own lives, the ability to
control our own destinies. [The Walt Disney film] set a new pattern for Cinderella: a helpless, hapless, pitiable, useless heroine who has to be saved time and time again by the talking mice and birds because she is "off in a world of dreams." It is a Cinderella who is not recognized by her prince until she is magically back in her ball gown, beribboned and bejewelled. Poor Cinderella. Poor us. ~ Jane Yolen

As I thought about endings and – being a lover of fairy tales – I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, 'And they lived happily ever after', is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it's the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the villain disposed of, families reunited, babies born. If we went on in the story Cinderella, she might be whispered about in court: after all, her manners are not impeccable, she always has smudges of ash on her nose, and no one can trace her bloodline back enough generations. Perhaps she has grown fat eating all that rich food in the castle, and the prince's eye has strayed.

If we went on in The Three Little Pigs, the brother who builds with bricks will have kicked the other two lay-abouts out of his house, or hired them to run his successful company and they – angry at their lower status – plot to kill him. But, having little imagination, do it the only way they know how, by trying to boil him in the pot that still holds the memory of the wolf's demise, so of course the brick building pig finds them out.

But modern books pose a different problem. They present harder choices. It's no longer fairy tale endings we are talking about, but the other stuff, more realistic, stronger, difficult, and maybe not happy-ever-after ~ Jane Yolen

Happily Ever After

Imagine them all
after the plotting, after the ball,
after the spelling, hopping, sweeping,
grumping, grousing, mopping, sleeping,
from small glass shoe to nuisance pea,
so ever after, all happily be-
enchanted with magic
from kingdoms
to seas.
Now close your eyes,
and dream of these. ~ Jane Yolen

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

Oh, don't get me started! I love fantasy, I read it for pleasure, even after all these years. Pat McKillip, Ursula Le Guin and John Crowley are probably my favorite writers in the field, in addition to all the writers in the Endicott Studio group - but there are many others I also admire. In children's fantasy, I'm particularly keen on Philip Pullman, Donna Jo Napoli, David Almond and Jane Yolen - though my favorite novels recently were Midori Snyder's Hannah's Garden, Holly Black's Tithe, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

I read a lot of mainstream fiction as well - I particularly love Alice Hoffman, A.S. Byatt, Sara Maitland, Sarah Waters, Sebastian Faulks, and Elizabeth Knox. There's also a great deal of magical fiction by Native American authors being published these days - Louise Erdrich's Antelope Wife, Alfredo Vea Jr.'s Maravilla, Linda Hogan's Power, and Susan Power's Grass Dancer are a few recent favorites.

I'm a big fan of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope - I re-read Jane Austen's novels in particular every year.Other fantasists say they read Tolkien every year, but for me it's Austen. I adore biographies, particularly biographies of artists and writers (and particularly those written by Michael Holroyd). And I love books that explore the philosophical side of art, such as Lewis Hyde's The Gift, Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, or David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous.

(from a 2002 interview) ~ Terri Windling

You think you know this story.
You do not. ~ Jane Yolen

Snow Speaks to the Mirror

My nose is smudged,
my hair in tangles.
I do not like
myself at angles.
Skin's not clear,
eyes all red.
Another hour
in my bed
would be a gift,
would feel real nice.
But can I trust
your strange advice?
Don't be daft.
I won't be guided
by a glass
that's so one-sided. ~ Jane Yolen

Snow White Makes a Plea to the Witch

Light a candle.
Feed your scrawny cat.
Polish your dark house.
Buy a new hat.

Write odes, darn socks.
Repair your crumbling stoop.
Put a smile on your face.
Pour out that sour soup.

Move away from the mines,
Far out by the bay.
And I beg you, please,
Throw that mirror away. ~ Jane Yolen

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

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

You see, my dear ice witch, I have had the love of children from all over the world because of my stories. A child's love is the perfect love, for it is given with a whole heart. That love will outlast me a hundredfold. And it will outlast you as well. ~ Jane Yolen

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. ~ Jane Yolen

And I say that to tell a prince to his face that you have dreamed of his doom invites the dreamer's doom as well. And, as you yourself reminded me, it may not be all of the truth. The greatest wisdom of any dreamer is to survive in order to dream again. Besides, how do you really know if what you dream is true or if, in telling of it, you make it come true? ~ Jane Yolen

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

'Your Life Calling' is the first thing in my long career I've ever actually invented. It is my entrepreneurial debut. ~ Jane Pauley

These things you treasure, how often they're somebody else's trash. ~ Emma Jane Unsworth

I think you should ignore Sara Teasdale (she's a bit of a moper, to be honest.).
Take Christina Rossetti's advice and be fire. ~ Mary Jane Hathaway

You can't make a cloudy day a sunny day, but can embrace it and decide it's going to be a good day after all. ~ Jane Lynch

Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands ~ Bob Hope

Our universities and museums are respected around the country. ~ Jane Byrne

We knew right off how to think of them but not precisely how to feel about them. ~ Jane Smiley

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox. ~ Jane Smiley

Death rarely changes how we feel about someone. Heightens it, more often than not. ~ Jane Harper

I think there really is no other way to write a long, serious
novel. You work, shelve it for a while, work, shelve it again,
work some more, month after month, year after year, and then
one day you read the whole piece through and, so far as you
can see, there are no mistakes. (The minute it's published and
you read the printed book you see a thousand.) This tortuous
process is not necessary, I suspect, for the writing of a popular
novel in which the characters are not meant to have depth and complexity, where character A is consistently stingy and character
B is consistently openhearted and nobody is a mass of
contradictions, as are real human beings. But for a true novel
there is generally no substitute for slow, slow baking.
We've all heard the stories of Tolstoy's pains over Anna Karenina,
Jane Austen's over Emma, or even Dostoevsky's over Crime and Punishment, a novel he grieved at having to publish prematurely,though he had worked at it much longer than most popular-fiction writers work at their novels. ~ John Gardner

I love being a Go-Go. It definitely has its ups and downs, and we have a very intense energy with each other. ~ Jane Wiedlin

I love Jane [Krakowski]. Jane's been a dear friend for maybe a dozen years. We've worked together on many shows and concerts and readings. We did Damn Yankees together and then we did Xanadu. Jane did all the workshops of Xanadu before it moved to Broadway. She's hysterical and our voices blended. We had a similar sensibility. ~ Cheyenne Jackson

Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards. ~ Jane Fonda

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers. ~ Harold Bloom

When a woman steps out of line and contravenes the feminine norm, whether on social media on on the Victorian street, there is a tacit understanding that somone must put her back in her place. Labelling the victims as 'just prostitutes' permits writing about Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane even today to continue to disparage, sexualize and dehumanize them; to continue to reinforce values of madonna/whore. ~ Hallie Rubenhold

Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being. ~ Jane Austen