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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

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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
Better
Telling
Potent
Real
Emotion
Medium
Think
Dies
Mediums
Thinking
Talking
Metaphor
People
Understand
Fairy
True
Tales
Stories
Emotions
Used
Refuse

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Childrens books change lives. Stories pour into the hearts of children and help make them what they become.
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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.
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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.
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Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.
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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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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 shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.
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Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.
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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.
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