I can't read fiction when I'm writing fiction, because I get intimidated if I read something really good.
— Judy Blume
Anybody who says, 'My childhood was completely happy,' is a person who isn't remembering the truth.
I think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.
In 1970, somebody once asked me whether I thought my books would still be around in 40 years, and I thought, 'How would I know, and why would I care?' Well, it turns out I really do care.
I am such a rewriter; I have so many notebooks filled with drafts you wouldn't believe.
It embarrasses me to flaunt anything good written about me or my books. I don't know what we're supposed to do about that.
We're supposed to be uncomfortable when we read something. That's how we learn.
I used to love getting on planes. I loved the packing and going places. Now I don't because I've developed these really bad sinuses. I have to take a prednisone to fly, but it works, and I'm OK.
When a parent comes into school waving a book and saying, 'Take this book away. I don't like this book.' I won't say in all cases, but in many cases, that will not happen anymore. It has to go through a proper review board. The complaining parent will have to fill out a complaint, you know, put it in writing.
I don't think it's realistic to say kids shouldn't watch any TV. I just wish the shows would be better. And that kids would watch less. Get out there and do things, kids! Don't become couch potatoes!
I do quite a bit of traveling. But sometimes I just want to stay at home!
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
I wasn't that good at science, and I gave up on math long before I should have. I like to think if I were in school today that would be different.
We can have our beliefs and still read and discuss things.
The '50s were a secretive time.
I don't do issue writing. I do character writing.
I'm not the world's best mother, though kids always assume I must be.
The women's movement was slow in coming to suburban New Jersey.
When I'm writing, I'm never trying to teach anything - maybe I'm trying to illuminate.
Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.
In sixth grade, I made up books to give book reports on.
You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.
I'm very good at setting goals and deadlines for myself, so I don't really need that from outside.
I'm an optimistic person, so I like to leave my readers with a sense of hopefulness.
I was so inspired by Beverly Cleary's funny and wonderful books.
When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.
I can't see an autobiography in my future. But who knows what might happen.
I don't think I could set a book in a place without knowing it really well.
I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'
I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.
You're supposed to be challenged in college.
I know it's working when I'm writing a book if I'm laughing or crying.
Here's the thing: If you don't want your kids to read a book, fine. You can tell them not to read a book, and maybe they will and maybe they won't. But you can't say what other kids can read.
I'm phobic about thunderstorms.
Everything they say a girl should get from her father in terms of total acceptance and love, I got all that from my father. But then I married a man just like my mother - so phlegmatic.
I still have such a thing for leather jackets. I have a closet full of them, and my husband is always saying to me, 'Why do you need another jacket? You have plenty of jackets.'
Telling kids the truth isn't always entirely possible, but talking to them is.
Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?
People need stories; they want stories. They always will.
My mother told me once that she had her talk with God whenever she started a new sweater: 'Please don't take me in the middle of the sweater.' And as soon as she finished knitting a sweater, and it was blocked and put together, she already had the wool to start the next sweater so that nothing bad would happen.
I never thought I wanted to write about the '50s, because I thought it was the most boring and bland decade to grow up in, and I never wanted to go back there.
You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don't have enough time to just sit and daydream.
My father was the youngest of seven, and nobody lived to be 60. And so we were always sitting shiva in my house, and my father would say, 'Life goes on.'
I can't relate to people who treat me as a 'famous person.' I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that's what I am. All people are really just regular.
Many of my books are set in New Jersey because that's where I was born and raised. I lived there until my kids finished elementary school. Then we moved to New Mexico, the setting for 'Tiger Eyes.'
I was twenty-seven when I began to write seriously, and after two years of rejections, my first book, 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo,' was accepted for publication.
I was a fearful kid and, for some crazy reason, a pretty fearless writer.
My mother's mantra was, 'How would it look to the neighbors?' And so you don't do anything because you're worried about how it would look to the neighbors.
I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.
