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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.

Jane Yolen

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Jane Yolen
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: February 11
Editor
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Jane Hyatt Yolen
Jane Hyatt Yolen Stemple
Jane H. Yolen Stemple
Head
Books
Debating
Makes
Scholars
Book
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Heart
Decades
Good
Critics
Time
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More quotes by Jane Yolen

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If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes living takes more courage than dying.
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Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.
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A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
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You write to be read. That is the bottom line.
Jane Yolen
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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
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Exercise the writing muscle every day.
Jane Yolen
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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
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If you love a waist, you waste a love.
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A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?
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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
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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
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Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
Jane Yolen
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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.
Jane Yolen
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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.
Jane Yolen
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It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.
Jane Yolen
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Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.
Jane Yolen
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Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.
Jane Yolen