Quotes from Judy Blume

What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

I was wildly interested in puberty as a child.

Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.

In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.

I can't let safety and security become the focus of my life.

Ideas seem to come from everywhere - my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.

When you ask, did writing change my life? It totally changed my life. It gave me my life.

I wasn't that good at science, and I gave up on math long before I should have. I like to think if I were in school today that would be different.

Life goes on if you're one of the lucky ones.

My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!

Parents still have a big influence on their kids - just ask any therapist. No, really, I think the parent is the most important influence on children: It's how they learn to love and treat other people.

I am a big defender of 'Harry Potter, ' and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish, we should be thankful for them.

Librarians save lives by handing the right book at the right time to a kid in need.

She wondered if all the firsts in her life would go by so quickly, and be forgotten just as quickly.

Suppose there aren't any more A + days once you get to be twelve? Wouldn't that be something! To spend the rest of your life looking for an A + day and not finding it.

I never read a horse book in my life. But I thought that's what my friends were reading and that's what I should be reading. And this was "Dobbin Does This" and "Dobbin Does That."

The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

I have the most loyal readers in the world.

I'm an optimistic person, so I like to leave my readers with a sense of hopefulness.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.

I don't think it's realistic to say kids shouldn't watch any TV. I just wish the shows would be better. And that kids would watch less. Get out there and do things, kids! Don't become couch potatoes!

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

I never thought I wanted to write about the '50s, because I thought it was the most boring and bland decade to grow up in, and I never wanted to go back there.