Writing For Children Quotes

The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever
they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work. ~ Sid Fleischman

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future. ~ Sonya Hartnett

I didn't write with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for children - children's books chose me. I think if it is a good book anyone will read it. ~ J.K. Rowling

And please God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I am writing for children, not golden stickers. ~ Rick Riordan

It's the ability to bring events and characters to a resolution that draws me to writing, especially writing for children. I don't want to ever be didactic, but if there's something I do want to say, it's that you can bring things around. You can make a change. Adult novels are about letting go. Children's novels are about getting a grip. ~ Tim Wynne-Jones

Anyone who says that writing for children or teens is easier than writing for adults has never tried it, because they are so much more critical than adults. You cannot get anything past them. ~ Margaret Stohl

Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one. ~ Enid Blyton

When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable. ~ Mark Haddon

I enjoy writing for both kids and adults, though I think I'm better at children's stories because I was a teacher for so long, and I know that audience well. The process is no different whether I'm writing for children or adults. Really, the elements of making a good story are the same. ~ Rick Riordan

And here it is worth while remembering, since we are discussing Not Writing for Children, that neither the Sleeping Beauty nor Rumpelstiltzkin was really written for children. In fact, none of the fundamental fairy stories was ever written at all. They all arose spontaneously from the folk and were transmitted orally from generation to generation to unlettered listeners of all ages. ~ P.L. Travers

Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying. ~ Kate Klise

Writing for children is as easy as describing the history of the Byzantium in three words. ~ Mo Willems

Messages are the death of an honest literary transaction with children ~ Maurice Sendak

Those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child. ~ Katherine Paterson

Reading your work out loud to yourself it's good. It helps even more if you read to people. If they start yawning that is a bad sign. Unless you are writing for children. Then your story is not bad, if you just wrote a bedtime story! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right. ~ Nina Bawden

We are writing for children...not idiots. ~ Ludwig Bemelmans

When writing for children, it's important to keep in touch with our own inner child. What frightened them, made them happy, made them sad or angry? ~ C.J. Heck

Writing for children, you do bear a responsibility to not include overt or graphic adult content that they are not ready for and don't need, or to address adult concepts or themes from an oblique angle or a child's limited viewpoint, with appropriate context, without being graphic or distressing. ~ Garth Nix

Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction. ~ Lloyd Alexander

I don't think about age groups when I write, although I think if I know I'm writing for Children I'll be a bit more ambitious, and think more about every word, because I know that they pay closer attention when they read than adults do. ~ Neil Gaiman

Writing for children hadn't occurred to me when I was younger, but nine years of teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with 10 or 11 years of experience as human beings. ~ Zilpha Keatley Snyder

I graduated from my Master of Fine Arts program for writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Of course, for a master's program, you have to do a ton of reading. I would get up, usually around 5:30, to do my reading; otherwise, I would fall behind. ~ Lisa Papademetriou

Writing for children is important to me because I want children to develop the same love of books I had as a child. ~ Darlene Foster

I like writing for children because they are not prejudiced against magic. ~ J.P. Hightman

If we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. ~ Robert Kennedy

April 18

Dear Ryan,

I'm considering writing to one of those advice columnists about us. That's how confused I still am.

When we started this, I thought that I just needed some time away from you. I just needed time to breathe. I needed a chance to live on my own and appreciate you again by missing you.

Those first few months were torture. I felt so lonely. I felt exactly what I wanted myself to feel, which was that I couldn't live without you. I felt it all day. I felt it when I slept in an empty bed. I felt it when I came home to an empty house. But somehow, one day, it sort of became OK. I don't know when that happened.

I thought at one point that maybe if I learned who you truly are, then I could love you again. Then I thought maybe if I learn who I really am, what I really want, then I could love you again. I have been grasping at things for months, trying to learn a lesson big enough, important enough, all-encompassing enough that it would bring us back together. But mostly, I'm just learning lessons about how to live my life. I'm learning how to be a better sister. I'm learning just how strong my mother has always been. That I should take my grandmother's advice more often. That sex can be healing. That Charlie isn't such a little kid anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've started focusing on other things. I don't feel all that desperate to figure us out and fix this. I feel sort of OK that it's n ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

I have never written the music that was in my heart to write; perhaps I never shall with this brain and these fingers, but I know that hereafter it will be written; when instead of these few inlets of the senses through which we now secure impressions from without, there shall be a flood of impressions from all sides; and instead of these few tones of our little octave, there shall be an infinite scale of harmonies - for I feel it - I am sure of it. This world of music, whose borders even now I have scarcely entered, is a reality, is immortal. ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The words are clear as in the reflection of the world on the water. Therefore write the Word at once, everywhere, from now till your hand is paralyzed, for THERE will be your work for GOD, since you can not work for God in other ways, and would not, & don't know how, or bend that way, from habit, & from talent in the use & signification & arrangement of the Word. ~ Jack Kerouac

I'm just not ready to give myself up, Sammy. I mean, there's something perfect about virginity, and I haven't found someone who deserves to take that perfection from me ... "
"You're loco, Carlos. Insane. Totally crazy ... Most guys think they're imperfect for still being virgins past the age of seventeen. ~ Zack Love

Let your emotions guide your hand to the paper and watch how your sorrows can turn into beauty. For tears relieve your body but writing relieves your heart. ~ Raneem Kayyali

The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember th ~ Neil Postman

Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the swinging boughs–Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance–the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him–he could see them almost as plainly as he saw Rilla–as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him, those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of yesterday, Walter–fight a good fight for the children of today and tomorrow. ~ L.M. Montgomery

I spend a lot of time in my bed. It's a good comfy one with a tartan bedspread. It's the only place I can read without straining my neck, and I take an afternoon nap, which is my reward for making enough money from my writing now not to have to work. I never get up in the morning before 11.30. ~ Martin Millar

I think, basically, I am an actor. Sometimes I'm an actor who's writing and sometimes an actor who's directing, but I think if I'm forced to fill out a form for my tax return, 'actor' is the first thing I write down. ~ Chris Eigeman

I wanted to write; I sought all possible paths of personal liberation, but I could never sacrifice a living instant of life for the sake of a line to be written, my balance for the sake of a manuscript, a storm within me for the sake of a poem. I loved life itself too much for this. ~ Nina Berberova

I write what I like to write. Those who like to listen to it, listen to it. And the ones who don't, watch football and drink beer, jog, go to discos and so forth. I never claimed to be a man for all seasons. ~ Frank Zappa

Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder. ~ Honore De Balzac

To all you parents out there, don't make your little girls, or little boys, so thirsty for love that they will want to drink water that will poison them. ~ Lisa Bedrick

Dogs are quick to show their affection. They never pout, they never bear a grudge. They never run away from home when mistreated. They never complain about their food. They never gripe about the way the house is kept. They are chivalrous and courageous, ready to protect their mistress at the risk of their lives. They love children, and no matter how noisy and boisterous they are, the dog loves every minute of it. In fact, a dog is still competition for a husband. Perhaps if we husbands imitated a few of our dog's virtues, life with our family might be more amiable. ~ Billy Graham

Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter. ~ Garrison Keillor

Books for general reading always smell badly. The odor of common people hangs about them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires. ~ Bertrand Russell

To write for a living, according to Mr. Whipple, is coquetting with starvation. ~ Francis Alexander Durivage

My challenge is to make sure the things I say and the things I do remain consistent for as often and as long as possible. My why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that together we can change our world. That's why I wake up every single day. I'm agnostic to the form it takes: I teach, I write, I speak, I advise. ~ Simon Sinek

They always wanted to do it for the children. But they never do, turns out, and the children go home crying, not having received the candy they were promised. ~ Douglas Wilson

Leave everything. Leave Dada. Leave your wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave your easy life, leave what you are given for the future. Set off on the roads. ~ Andre Breton

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I went to Thailand and built a village for 27 rescued children and this is where my passion to help prevent modern day slavery came from. ~ David Batstone

I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo. ~ Rachel Sklar

What will I write in this beautiful book?
She carried the book to class for the rest of the day, and that night she put it under her pillow, still blank. She liked it blank right now, liked to know that it was waiting, listening. Just like her friends. ~ Simone St. James

The Holocaust distorts the future vision of the mother-child dual union at the level of reality for both parties. Mothers do not see that they can securely bring up their children, and the children becoming mothers and fathers anticipate the fate of their parents. Prolonging their orphan state they remain childless. ~ Terez Virag

And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue.
Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in ~ Ray Bradbury

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies. ~ Deana J. Driver

As the adults, we are the ones who set the stage for vitality, love, or disharmony in the home. We set ourselves up for one or the other, and our children take their cues from us. ~ Gabriel Cousens M.D.

And so it was on the second Thursday of September, these five men kissed their spouses and children good-bye and climbed aboard the rented RV for a fun filled weekend of golfing, drinking, taking drugs and having sex with women who were not their wives. ~ Helen Argiro

I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged. ~ James Joyce

Remember blessed children of men that the purpose of the real science should be to increase the happiness and to free the race from every external condition that would not be beneficial for the elation of man to the pristine greatness of his original cosmic destiny. ~ Count Of St. Germain

Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice. ~ Darynda Jones

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it. ~ Florence Nightingale

'Cue for Treason,' by Geoffrey Trease, radicalized my young girl brain and made me want to be a gender-bending, sonnet-writing anarchist. It really made something roar to life inside of me. ~ Miriam Toews

I want a future where my children feel safe and appreciated and proud to be who they are. My heart is one with all the Arab Spring heroes, no matter how small they think their role is. I know they believe, like me, that we are working for a world whereby an Arab can live with the other in a respectful and dignified way. ~ Tawakkol Karman

There is no more subversive act than the act of writing from a woman's experience of life using a woman's judgment.
"Prospects for Women in Writing" 1986 ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Since so many people these days don't seem to start their families until around age forty, I predict there will be less child beating, but more slipped disks from lifting babies out of cribs. Even the father of advanced age who's not inclined to spare the rod is likely to suffer more than his victim: The first punch he throws might well be the last straw for his rotator cuff, reducing his disciplinary options to mere verbal abuse and napping. ~ Sarah Silverman

The farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Love the family! Defend and promote it as the basic cell of human
society; nurture it as the prime sanctuary of life. Give great care to the
preparation of engaged couples and be close to young married couples, so
that they will be for their children and the whole community an eloquent
testimony of God's love. ~ Pope John Paul II

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Even their contemporaries felt that the relationship of Elizabeth and Robert transcended the details on practicality. There had to be some explanation for their lifelong fidelity, and those contemporaries put it down to 'synaptia', a hidden conspiracy of the stars, whose power to rule human lives no-one doubted: 'a sympathy of spirits between them, occasioned perhaps by some secret constellation', in the words of the historian William Camden, writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Theirs was a relationship already rooted in history and mythology. And that moment when Elizabeth heard she had come to the throne encapsulated much about their story. If our well-loved picture of Elizabeth's accession is something of a fantasy - if the reality is on the whole more interesting - you might say the same about our traditional picture of her relationship with Robert Dudley. ~ Sarah Gristwood

Cool parents, I thought, are the ones who know nothing. It made me feel a little sad for mine, but I didn't say any of this. ~ John Darnielle

A two-career couple with children is a complex, sensitive piece of machinery with lots of moving parts. Anything less than total cooperation will throw it out of whack and shut it down. A couple can wind up paying the ultimate price for trying to have it all - losing it all. ~ Kathie Lee Gifford