|
60c901b
|
All around me, grown-up voices called out, "Amen!" as if the word was a hall pass into Heaven." --
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
7064dd8
|
Like the piano player, I have memory in my fingertips. I watch words spill out creating worlds, inventing colors, bridging generations.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
5391494
|
Welcome to Neverland," Peter said, as if this were supposed to be a big surprise. Darla took her hand away from his. "It's smaller than I thought it would be," she said. This time she looked right at him."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
3d7bf0e
|
JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life: 1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her? 2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details? 3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill? Or do as many mothers before you did--just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent. Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-sch..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
00552ec
|
Even her powders and face paint couldn't disguise the age lines and gripe lines that ran as deep as the railway tracks some said were bound to cross our mountain any day so.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
7b3664d
|
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.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
13f4862
|
The great archetypal stories provide a framework or model for an individual's belief system. They are, in Isak Dinesen's marvelous expression, 'a serious statement of our existence.' The stories and tales handed down to us from the cultures that proceded us were the most serious, succinct expressions of the accumulated wisdom of those cultures. They were created in a symbolic, metaphoric story language and then hones by centuries of tongue-..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
33c5cf7
|
Papa wasn't like them, with lines like cursive writing up and down their faces.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
f737913
|
Come, Ye Women Oh, come, ye women of the Isles, And listen to my song, For if ye be but thirteen years, Ye've not been women long. And if ye be threescore and ten, No longer women be, Or so say all the merry men Who count so cruel-ly. But women we be from our birth, And will be till we die. Our counte is made so differently To give the men that lie. Oh, come, ye women of the Isles, And listen to my song, For we be women all through life, Wh..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
b5cd4b9
|
The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream.
|
|
writing
honesty
dreams
truth
|
Jane Yolen |
|
553ed85
|
The others are all common mouths chattering, empty heads like wooden whistles blowing common tunes.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
8dee5b1
|
I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up." --
|
|
writing
|
Jane Yolen |
|
9e60696
|
You may adore Love You Forever, but I hear it as a story about an overbearing and smothering mother who infantilizes her son and can only tell him she loves him when he is fast asleep. I also contend that she drugs his cocoa. And that when the man's baby daughter wakes up sixteen years later and finds him fondling her in her room, she will be calling 911 and going into therapy.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
908d03f
|
He was always being sent away from place to place for lying. The problem was, he never lied. He simply saw truth differently from other folk. On the slant.
|
|
merlin-s-booke
|
Jane Yolen |
|
bc2dfd3
|
And I say that to tell a prince to his face that you have dreamed of his doom invites the dreamer's doom as well. And, as you yourself reminded me, it may not be all of the truth. The greatest wisdom of any dreamer is to survive in order to dream again. Besides, how do you really know if what you dream is true or if, in telling of it, you make it come true?
|
|
merlin-s-booke
|
Jane Yolen |
|
fd7b925
|
Now you must close your eyes. Yes, that is it. Selinda, you, too. Good. Good. Bring in the dark that I may teach you to breathe. For it is breath that is behind words. And words that are the shapers of knowledge. And knowledge that is the base of understanding. And understanding, the link between sister and sister." And"
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
47d2729
|
Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.
|
|
lies
|
Jane Yolen |
|
77c787e
|
Stories retold are stories remade.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
40aa0c2
|
We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.
|
|
writing
writers-on-writing
self-discovery
writers
|
Jane Yolen |
|
ecb0240
|
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.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
eb13779
|
You think you know this story. You do not.
|
|
stereotypes
stories
|
Jane Yolen |
|
ecf1a8e
|
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?
|
|
time-travel
wwii
holocaust
|
Jane Yolen |
|
cbeb274
|
He knew he was not a brave man, but he had a great sense of drama. In some circumstances it could seem the same. Forcing
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
02d1e58
|
A man whose axe was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his axe while he was digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked, and spoke like any other child.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
d3aad0c
|
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.
|
|
writing
|
Jane Yolen |
|
abd960d
|
Happily Ever After Imagine them all after the plotting, after the ball, after the spelling, hopping, sweeping, grumping, grousing, mopping, sleeping, from small glass shoe to nuisance pea, so ever after, all happily be- enchanted with magic from kingdoms to seas. Now close your eyes, and dream of these.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
5f8e161
|
Live," he whispered. "For my Chaya. For all our Chayas. Live. And remember." --
|
|
remembrance
jewish
|
Jane Yolen |
|
88c9dc5
|
She would not let herself get lost in the past, making it somehow better and lovelier than it was. She'd never liked that in old people when she was young, and she wasn't about to countenance it in herself now. The past was a lot like Wonderland: treacherous and marvelous and dull in equal measure. Survival was all that mattered - and she was a survivor. Of course, in the end, she thought, there is no such thing as survival. And just as wel..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
f2e03e9
|
Somewhere becomes a nightmare. I knock on no doors, make no phone calls. Nowhere becomes my destination. You can find it on the blank spaces of any free map in any old store. Just turn a corner of your mind, and it's there.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
9a4cea7
|
The salt smell of the ocean, sharp and steady, called to her from the window. Looking out, she saw her sisters, the waves, beckoning her with their white arms.
|
|
mermaids
ocean
|
Jane Yolen |
|
eaa94fc
|
She left two mermaid tears, crystals with a bit of salt embedded in them, on his pillow.
|
|
sadness
mermaid
tears
longing
|
Jane Yolen |
|
00be1e8
|
Snow White Makes a Plea to the Witch Light a candle. Feed your scrawny cat. Polish your dark house. Buy a new hat. Write odes, darn socks. Repair your crumbling stoop. Put a smile on your face. Pour out that sour soup. Move away from the mines, Far out by the bay. And I beg you, please, Throw that mirror away.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
49a0c4b
|
Snow Speaks to the Mirror My nose is smudged, my hair in tangles. I do not like myself at angles. Skin's not clear, eyes all red. Another hour in my bed would be a gift, would feel real nice. But can I trust your strange advice? Don't be daft. I won't be guided by a glass that's so one-sided.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
83da33f
|
After a while, the story becomes the truth because no one actually remembers how things really happened.
|
|
truth
|
Jane Yolen |
|
d557c8f
|
It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
|
|
fear
love
|
Jane Yolen |
|
7309d6a
|
As Mama once told me, "We called him Boy for the first two months of his life, but when his third-month birthday came around and we saw that sweet smile--especially when you were close to him, reaching out for him--we realized that he had chosen life. So we named him Chaim after your zaide, your grandfather, but also because 'chaim' in Hebrew means 'life.'" I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without my twin."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
2207e89
|
to eat away that hope. "Belief," Mama often said, "is the first thing to come, and the last thing to go." "Belief," Papa always countered, "is for children."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
aa92513
|
We're lucky we don't have to share. Lots of people have to--you told me so yourself." "Share?" Gittel had looked appalled. Chaim remembered the face she'd made at the time, adding, "Papa, we have so little, how could we possibly share?" He'd looked at her, shook his head. "Many people have far less, and that you must never forget."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
a5e2905
|
One day Ilka told me they were moving to America. Her papa, who was a professor, had found work there. "Is it far away?" I asked. "America?" We hadn't studied geography yet. "Over the ocean," she said. I'd never seen the ocean. I thought it was like the pond in the nearby park, only bigger. "I will visit," I said. "I will write," she said. The Nazis came. We did neither."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
2ae3751
|
The minute they were in the hall, he whispered to his father, "He's a pig." "Not kosher," Papa added, and they both chuckled."
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
ee2cb50
|
She lay curled up on the ground, one scrawny hand held out as if begging, the other clutching a doll as ragged as she. But her mouth was open, her eyes wide, unblinking. There was a bullet hole in her forehead that looked like a third eye. A dark bruise on her upturned cheek. Gittel had such a dress once, he thought. That blue. Even as he walked on, his eyes filled with tears. A line of a poem sledgehammered into his startled mind. Dance on..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
6b0f9b4
|
People were dying around us, of starvation, tuberculosis, cholera, typhus, typhoid, deportation, influenza, heartbreak. Their lungs were filling up because of the cold. They were being shot for walking too quickly, staring too hard, not answering questions fast enough or answering too fast, or just because they wore the yellow star. To die was easy. To live was harder. Papa said to us, "We have chosen the more difficult path, that of life. ..
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
2e6d8a7
|
Once Once, oh once, there was, was not, A girl, princess, mermaid, widow, witch, queen, wife, A boy, king, soldier, wizard, troll, giants, Magic Life. The tale turns, returns, confuses, confesses, And all the hardships, spells, and stresses, End well in happy laughter And we hope- ever after. Believe me, friend- because would I, A storyteller, ever lie?
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |
|
0b4bc54
|
At least Em, long-suffering as she was, tried to give the child a bit of her heart, which - after all those years of living with Henry on that old gray farm in the middle of the gray prairie - was as dried up as an old pea. She tried, but she wasn't much good at it. It was a bit like trying to water a budding flower in the middle of a dry Kansas summer with a watering can poked through with holes.
|
|
|
Jane Yolen |