Jane Yolen Quotes

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

In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.

~ Jane Yolen

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

~ Jane Yolen

And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she's ever going to be.

~ 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. There will be times when he will surround you with walls of darkness. But remember always that your soul is secure to you, for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your soul, for your soul is part of God.

~ 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

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.

~ 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

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

~ Jane Yolen

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

~ Jane Yolen

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

~ Jane Yolen

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

~ 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

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

Touch magic. Pass it on.

~ Jane Yolen

You can only chase a butterfly for so long.

~ Jane Yolen

Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.

~ 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

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

Ah—now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple.

~ Jane Yolen

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

~ 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

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

If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?

~ 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