Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. I thought that this electric typewriter was about the most fascinating toy in the world - I liked the little bell and the sounds and the feel of the keys and especially the erase key.

I developed my taste for coffee at five, staying with my grandmother in Connecticut.

My grandmother was, back when they called them 'stewardesses,' a flight attendant. I actually had a ball wearing that little uniform and making sure everything was under control.

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids.

My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.

My grandmother, she's been the positive portion of my life the entire time.

One of my early childhood memories was my grandmother always having a bowl of Nestle chocolate bars at her house. My sister and I would argue over who could eat the chocolate bars. Looking back, I don't know why we just didn't share. We could have split them.

I always say I lived my life with my grandmother. She was emotionally stable, and she was very encouraging to me.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn't like that.

I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers.

I sleep with my baby blanket, Kiki, that my nana made for me.

My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.

I would say my grandmother would be like my personal god.

I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.

My dad is a writer, and to see him always in front of a typewriter gave me the inspiration to write. He was my idol, my hero. I wanted to be just like him.

I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

I remember my father banging away on an IBM Selectric in the garage. He wrote his first novels on that machine. I remember its pebbly surface, its cold heft. It made its mark, literally and violently.

I first fell in love with comedy when I'd visit my granny as a kid. Trips to her house meant staying up late drinking Coca-Cola and watching 'Saturday Night Live'.

My mom bought me an 'Anne of Green Gables' journal. And I just remember thinking it was so cool, and I could write anything in it.

When I grew up as a kid, a part of my life - I grew up in Boston near Revere Beach, at my grandma's, and she would take me to the beach.

I wrote a screenplay for 'The Witches,' which Alfonso Cuaron was producing, but we couldn't get it made! The studio just wouldn't greenlight that movie. It's my favorite Roald Dahl book, 'The Witches,' because I grew up with my grandmother a lot of the time, and the relationship between the boy and the grandmother speaks volumes to me.

When I was a kid, my mother used to drive my father to work in Indianapolis, and I would see, practically every day of my young life, a huge Phillips 66 sign. So it is the red and green of that sign against the blue Hoosier sky. The blue in the 'Love' is cerulean. Therefore, my 'Love' is an homage to my father.