Judy Blume Biography | Inspiration Quotations | Motivation Quotes

Judy Blume Motivational Quotations:

• “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”

•  “I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.”

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

•  “You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don't have enough time to just sit and daydream.”

•  “We're supposed to be uncomfortable when we read something. That's how we learn.”

•  “The creative process; I enjoy thinking up the stories and situations for my books.”

•  “It's all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but it's that determination.”

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

•  “People need stories; they want stories. They always will.”

•  “When I'm writing, I'm never trying to teach anything - maybe I'm trying to illuminate.”

•  “My father was the youngest of seven, and nobody lived to be 60. And so we were always sitting shiva in my house, and my father would say, 'Life goes on.'”

•  “I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says - it makes me choke up - it says, 'I'm a Jersey tomato'... I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it.”

•  “If only there was a vaccine to protect against breast cancer, we'd be lining up - wouldn't we?”

•  “The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.”

•  “My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.”

  

   

• “I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.”

•  “When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.”

•  “I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.”

•  “When a parent comes into school waving a book and saying, 'Take this book away. I don't like this book.' I won't say in all cases, but in many cases, that will not happen anymore. It has to go through a proper review board. The complaining parent will have to fill out a complaint, you know, put it in writing.”

• “I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.”

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

•  “I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone.”

•  “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.”

•  “I can't relate to people who treat me as a 'famous person.' I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that's what I am. All people are really just regular.”

•  “I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.”

•  “I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.”

•  “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!”

•  “I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!”​
  

  

   

• “Everybody wants to share life and be in love and be loved.”

•  “Fear is contagious, and those who wish America to become a faith-based society are doing their best to spread it.”

•  “I have the most loyal readers in the world.”

•  “A good writer is always a people watcher.”

•  “Here's the thing: If you don't want your kids to read a book, fine. You can tell them not to read a book, and maybe they will and maybe they won't. But you can't say what other kids can read.”

•  “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.”

•  “I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.'”

•  “When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.”

•  “The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.”

•  “I meet people on the street or at book signings and they tend to treat me as if they know me, as if we're connected. It's great.”

•  “I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.”

•  “I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.”

•  “When I began to write and used a typewriter, I went through three drafts of a book before showing it to an editor.”

•  “Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?”

•  “As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.”

•  “Anyone who thinks my life is cupcakes is all wrong.”

•  “I've never been one to let others decide what's right for me or my children.”

•  “When I was young, my parents had a library in our living room. I was always free to browse and read.”

•  “If those of us who care about making our own decisions about what to read and what to think don't take a stand, others will decide for us.”

•  “When I was first writing, my little prayers were, 'Please, please, please. Let something be published someday.' Then it went to, 'Please, please, please. Let somebody read this.'”

•  “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.”

•  “I wish I'd gone to a small liberal-arts college where I'd have read the great books instead of a large university where I majored in early-childhood education.”

•  “I don't have anything new to say about teenagers.”

•  “After each book, I get panicky. I don't love the reviews. I don't like going through all that, and you would think that, after almost 40 years of writing, I'd have got the hang of it.”

•  “I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.”

•  “I'm not good at keeping secrets.”

•  “I am very sentimental, very emotional, but never in my writing; I am very tough.”

•  “I think divorce is a tragedy, traumatic and horribly painful for everybody. That's why I wrote 'Smart Women.' I want kids to read that and to think what life might be like for their parents. And I want parents to think about what life is like for their kids.”

•  “I wish I could prevent my kids from making all the mistakes I've made. But I can't do that. No parent can.”

•  “I believe that 'The Artist' is the kind of movie you see and you don't forget. I know it's going to stay with me.”

•  “I was wildly interested in puberty as a child.”

•  “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!”

•  “When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.”

•  “I can't see an autobiography in my future. But who knows what might happen.”

•  “I was so inspired by Beverly Cleary's funny and wonderful books.”

•  “In sixth grade, I made up books to give book reports on.”

•  “My mother told me once that she had her talk with God whenever she started a new sweater: 'Please don't take me in the middle of the sweater.' And as soon as she finished knitting a sweater, and it was blocked and put together, she already had the wool to start the next sweater so that nothing bad would happen.”

•  “Telling kids the truth isn't always entirely possible, but talking to them is.”

•  “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 think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became.”

•  “When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.”