“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”
—Donna Tartt (author of The Secret History and The Little Friend)
May 2012
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“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
—Joseph Chilton Pearce (via lauriehalseanderson)
“In fiction, the world can be as fanciful and bizarre as you want it to be, and events will always benefit you in the end.”
—
Janelle Brown in the Los Angeles Review of Books, on Roald Dahl’s books.
This is what I love about writing books for kids.
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
—Albert Einstein (via mmvaughan)
“…it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.”
—Neil Gaiman, from his commencement address at The University of the Arts.
Words to live by #5
Well said, Frank. Taken from his new book The Shape of Design available now.
“Picture books are the most wild, innovative, untethered, experimental literary genre I know.”
—From Laurel Snyder’s blog post, “A meditation on my fierce love of picture books.”
“Things don’t always work out the way we want them to. We try, and sometimes we get hurt, and sometimes we cry. I guess you could say we even fall out of a tree, in a manner of speaking. But we get up. And next time, we don’t go up the same tree, or maybe we go up, but hold on tighter.”
—Emma Jean’s mother in Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Laruren Tarshis.
“We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That’s where the adventure is. Not knowing where you’ll end up or how you’ll fare. It’s all a mystery, and when we say any different, we’re just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?”
—
Also from Ivey’s The Snow Child.
A wonderful book.
“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”
—From Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child.
Teacher Appreciation Week
Inspired by this piece, with children’s and YA writers reflecting on their favorite teachers, here I reflect on mine.
I have three.
1. Mr. Palmer
Kindergarten, Singapore American School
He was tubby and tap danced. He was full of joy.
He taught me to read.
2. Mrs. Anderson
Fourth grade, Singapore American School
She wore no makeup and had long black hair hanging like a drape past her waist.
We sat on bean bags and she read us books aloud. Where the Red Fern Grows, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I cried and cried and fell in love with those stories. They felt like home.
3. Ms. DeGrandpre
Twelfth grade, La Mirada High School, English LIt
She wore huge red glasses and talked funny.
We read Beowulf and Shakespeare’s sonnets and A Tale of Two Cities. She assigned a poetry project that gave me something to care about during the loneliest period of my life.
She told me I was an excellent student and gave me A’s. I couldn’t remember having been told anything like that before.
“From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions - fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”
—Maurice Sendak, in 1964, found in this piece at Fast Company.
“But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there’s a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. but mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore.”
—From Rebecca Stead’s, “When You Reach Me.”
Los Angeles Literary Calendar →
lalitscene.com
Delighted to discover this site listing literary happenings in the LA area.
“There’s plenty about my life I can’t change. Can’t bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can’t make the world loving and kind. Can’t change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot—I can change that. Can change it big.”
—From the “Wendell” section of Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman.
