Jane Yolen

You can only chase a butterfly for so long.

Touch magic. Pass it on.

from Taking Your Clothes to the Salvation Army:Okay, so strangers will be grateful for this, will wear the socks to keep their feet warm, blow their noses in your handkerchiefs, pull up the shorts, tuck in the size large shirts (too small for our boys, too big for our daughter), and bits of you will be out there, engaging in a life you no longer have.

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.

Their lips were too thin to ask forgiveness, and their minds too mean to understand love.

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

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

You've got some power," Jakkin said. "One hug__nd the lights go out!

Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.

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.

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.

Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself. There will be times when he will surround you with walls of darkness. But remember always that your soul is secure to you, for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your soul, for your soul is part of God.

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.

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

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.

1. Write every day2. 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 emotion5. Be careful of being facile6. Be wary of preaching7. Be prepared for serendipity

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.