Quotes from Jane Yolen

If a parent wants to talk about slavery or wants to talk about countries where bombs go off, they need to have a way - a setting - to have that conversation. And there are wonderful books out there for those kinds of conversations.

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.

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.

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.

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.

A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.

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?

Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.

You can only chase a butterfly for so long.

Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

Touch magic. Pass it on.

We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.

Part of her revolted against the insanity of the rules. Part of her was grateful. In a world of chaos, any guidelines helped. And she knew that each day she remained alive, she remained alive . One plus one plus one. The Devil's arithmetic...

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.

1. Write every day 2. Write what interests you. 3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.) 4. Write with honest emotion 5. Be careful of being facile 6. Be wary of preaching 7. Be prepared for serendipity Finally I would remind you of something that Churchill told a group of school boys: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.

Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.

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.

Shit is another useful word. Also very common. For example, pleasantly surprised? You say 'No shit?' You think someone tells you tales, you scoff 'You're shitting me.' You find something you like very much, you exclaim 'That's good shit!

A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teacher and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.

The tales of Elfland do not stand or fall on their actuality but on their truthfulness, their speaking to the human condition, the longings we all have for the Faerie Other.

What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?

It is winter now, and the roses are blooming again, their petals bright against the snow. My father died last April; my sisters no longer write, except at the turning of the year, content with their fine houses and their grandchildren. Beast and I putter in the gardens and walk slowly on the forest paths. [from the poem, Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary ]