Quote

Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.

Jane Yolen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Writing
Cheapest
Gathered
Free
Part
Ideas
Hard

More quotes by Jane Yolen

Image
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.
Jane Yolen
Image
If you love a waist, you waste a love.
Jane Yolen
Image
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.
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.
Jane Yolen
Image
Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door.
Jane Yolen
Image
It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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?
Jane Yolen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.
Jane Yolen
Image
If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
Jane Yolen