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 More Quotes by Jane Yolen More Quotes From Jane Yolen They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die. Jane Yolen real talking thinking Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world. Jane Yolen skins perfect world 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 choices writing children If you love a waist, you waste a love. Jane Yolen waste ifs In fantasy stories we learn to understand the differences of others, we learn compassion for those things we cannot fathom, we learn the importance of keeping our sense of wonder. The strange worlds that exist in the pages of fantastic literature teach us a tolerance of other people and places and engender an openness toward new experience. Fantasy puts the world into perspective in a way that 'realistic' literature rarely does. It is not so much an escape from the here-and-now as an expansion of each reader's horizons. Jane Yolen new-experiences differences compassion You write to be read. That is the bottom line. Jane Yolen bottom lines writing 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 numbers memories people Storytelling is our oldest form of remembering the promises we have made to one another and to our various gods, and the promises given in return; it is a way of recording our human emotions and desires and taboos. Jane Yolen desire way promise 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 never-forget names numbers 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. Jane Yolen intuition done needs 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 hair memories past 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 believe book 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 dream enemy son When you realize my best selling books are 'Owl Moon,' the 'How Do Dinosaur' books, and 'Devil's Arithmetic,' how can the public make sense of that! I have fans who think I only write picture books or only write SF and fantasy. I have fanatics of my poetry and are stunned to find out I write prose, too! Jane Yolen best you devil poetry 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 picture everything eye believe Why am I working so hard? Going for 400 books, perhaps, but who's really counting? Jane Yolen why going books hard Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible. Jane Yolen best day you teacher 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. Jane Yolen story me research joy 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 passion husband joy book I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told. Jane Yolen dont-care story care real
