Bernard Beckett Quotes

I like writing for teenagers because they're not snobs.

Teen fiction should be about teenagers - no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.

Of course Stephen King doesn't believe in teen novels. I've started to suspect he doesn't even believe in teenagers.

Judy Blume especially sort of broke the boundaries of what is appropriate and what should be written about - what teenagers are actually doing.

There's a really generous readership with YA.

I know that I'll be writing for young adults for a long time. Mostly because I just love the readers and the teachers and librarians that I interact with.

Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?

I don't think I would ever inch my way up to Y.A. That audience is very well served. There are a lot of wonderful writers writing for Y.A. I feel like I'm in the right place.

I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which 'target' them.

Well, I'll tell you, I don't know how aware teenagers are of me. I think it really depends on the teenager and how well-versed in music they are and what kind of music they like.

I write the story as it comes to me - YA is my natural voice, not a conscious choice.

When I first began writing, and I told people what I wrote, I'd get a blank stare and sometimes a 'Huh?' They weren't sure what young adult literature was. Now everyone knows.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW.

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.

One of the interesting things about YA books - I don't know about Percy Jackson, but I do know about 'Twilight' and 'Maximum Ride': There are a lot of adult readers. In fact, we released 'Maximum Ride' both as a paperback for kids and as a mass release for adults.

Everyone wants something that'll appeal to, like, 13-year-olds to 18-year-olds. Especially working in television and trying to pitch shows, they're like, 'We definitely want something that a 14-year-old will be, like, super-psyched about.' And I'm like, 'I don't know if my reality is appealing to a 14-year-old.'

'Harry Potter' really harnessed the imagination of so many young-adult minds, and it's the same with the 'Divergent' series.

As someone who writes and teaches YA fiction, I spend a lot of time trying to define its character and readership, and I don't think I'm alone - genres are all about boundary drawing, and the YA genre is, in a lot of ways, about carving out boundaries around adolescence, a space for teenagers to do teenage things.

A lot of my fans are young women that are my age. We're all going through the same problems at the same time, so I just tried to be really honest with that.

To me, a great story well told is a great story well told, and just because the protagonist is a young adult doesn't mean that story has less merit or worth than if the protagonist is a full-grown adult.

I don't wake up every day and just write to write. I only write with purpose.

There's a kind of funny gap between 14 and 20 when young people don't read very much. Nobody really knows what to do about it, although we've tried to reach these dropout readers with the 'young adult' book.

I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.

I never looked at magazines before I started modeling. I was 13 or 14, and none of my friends were into magazines. We were into the fashion of the day, though.

It's rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.