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.
And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she’s ever going to be.
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.
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.
You’ve got some power,” Jakkin said. “One hug—and the lights go out!
We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.
Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing… the rest will follow.
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.
Their lips were too thin to ask forgiveness, and their minds too mean to understand love.
I do not know where I am going or what I will do when I get there. I know only that to put one foot in front of the other, moves me on, away from you to a place, where I do not want to be.
Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.
A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul.
Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.’ That depends… on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.
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.
If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?
In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates – ‘Pirates in Petticoats.’ After that, I was a book writer for good.