Josie Bissett Quotes

Children who are read to learn two things: First, that reading is worthwhile, and second, that they are worthwhile.

I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.

With acting, I started very young, and I'd performed for a lot of children in boarding schools, late at night after the dormitory lights were out. I'd have a flashlight, and I'd be Count Dracula, or Shakespeare, or Yogi Bear, and leap from bunk to bunk. I loved the laughter; I liked the way it made people feel.

When I was a kid, I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way.

I read a lot of books to my children, and they all seem really good. I think people have gotten really good at children's books.

Making reading an enjoyable activity for children is a challenge. So I ensure that I write in a way that is fun for children to read.

For a child, reading a book can be such an intense experience.

I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

Books are such a great way to spend time with your children, open lines of communication with your children, and just build that strong foundation.

There's something about a toy to a child where the relationship is real, where the kid is playing, and it's just really amazing.

I love all three 'Cars' movies, and I honestly love almost all of the Pixar movies. They make you laugh, they make you emotional, and they bring back memories.

So many things that you can ask children hopefully pique their interest and they can design and think for themselves. Having children draw and illustrate what they saw in their minds' eyes during the story is a tremendous teaching aid.

Making my family laugh when I was little - it became an addiction. It was a kind of survival.

A book is actually a place, a place where we, as adults, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word to image, connecting these images to memories, dreams, and larger ideas. Television, film, even the stage play, have already been imagined for us, but the book, in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it.

Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.

My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.

As you become acquainted with a character you are creating, you add parts of yourself that are pertinent to that character.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

I don't think an actor needs to necessarily go through his things to do his job. I think it's way more important to imagine. And then, when you're imagining, your experiences, your images and your own personal things will show up, but you keep imagining. You don't get stuck in your own personal things, otherwise you are telling your story in every character, and that's not interesting for anybody.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

The novel is a game or joke shared between author and reader.

One of the fun things about play is making up stories.

[Children] use up the same part of my head as poetry does. To deal with children is a matter of terrific imaginative identification. And the children have to come first. It's no use putting off their evening meal for two months.

That's the wonderful thing about drama and writing and fiction: it's this wonderful shared experience that we all have. We can see into each other's lives.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.