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

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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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You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.
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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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Childrens books change lives. Stories pour into the hearts of children and help make them what they become.
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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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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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You write to be read. That is the bottom line.
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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.
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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.
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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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If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
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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.
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It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.
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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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Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.
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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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Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
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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.
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If you love a waist, you waste a love.
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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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