Jane Yolen Quotes

I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.

The moment kids start to lie is the moment storytelling begins. They are talking about things they didn't see. It's amazing. It's a wonderful moment. Parents should celebrate. 'Hurray! My boy finally started to lie!' All right! It calls for celebration.

Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher.

Reading and writing is so important, and it's something I am really keen to promote. It's something that can be a bit lost these days with so much else going on.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

If you just casually look at a baby, it doesn't look like there's very much going on there, but they know more and learn more than we would ever have thought. Every single minute is incredibly full of thought and novelty. It's easy as adults to take for granted everything it took to arrive at the state where we are.

When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

There's definitely a value in being literate.

… a barbarian who could not write one sentence of grammar.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.

Being incarcerated does not mean being devoid of the capacity to learn, grow, and think, and it's critical that prisons provide spaces where learning can be both cultivated and encouraged.

Kids grasp what you teach them, from crawling to walking, for everything they look up to their parents.

Reading helps you to be knowledgeable. It also improvises your vocabulary. It's a very good habit, extremely essential.

You could be a music prodigy at age 4, like Mozart, but you can't be a writing prodigy.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way.

All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.

I thought that you had to learn to write by yourself and if you couldn't do it, then you were out of luck.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

Reading is more important than writing.

If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.

Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature.

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.