My husband is a feminist!
— Judy Blume
My father died when I was still in college, and it was sudden, and he was my beloved parent, and you just can't imagine what you life is going to be like.
I don't deal with writer's block, I don't allow myself to believe that there is such a thing. I think that there are good days and a lot more less good days.
I was wildly interested in puberty as a child.
Parents still have a big influence on their kids - just ask any therapist. No, really, I think the parent is the most important influence on children: It's how they learn to love and treat other people.
If only there was a vaccine to protect against breast cancer, we'd be lining up - wouldn't we?
I wish I could prevent my kids from making all the mistakes I've made. But I can't do that. No parent can.
By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.
I don't want to repeat myself.
I am very sentimental, very emotional, but never in my writing; I am very tough.
I wish I'd gone to a small liberal-arts college where I'd have read the great books instead of a large university where I majored in early-childhood education.
When I was young, my parents had a library in our living room. I was always free to browse and read.
I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone.
Anyone who thinks my life is cupcakes is all wrong.
Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?
The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.
In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.
I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says - it makes me choke up - it says, 'I'm a Jersey tomato'... I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it.
I believe that 'The Artist' is the kind of movie you see and you don't forget. I know it's going to stay with me.
When I see kids standing next to their mothers at book signings, clutching a copy of 'Forever,' I know what's coming. They'll say to me, 'How old do I have to be to read this?' hoping I'll give them permission. But I can't do that.
My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.
Everybody wants to share life and be in love and be loved.
I'm thinking of sending out censorship packets: information to share with those who want to defend my books when they come under fire. I'll tell why I wrote them and include reviews and letters of support from children and their parents.
I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.
Fear is contagious, and those who wish America to become a faith-based society are doing their best to spread it.
I don't have anything new to say about teenagers.
When I was first writing, my little prayers were, 'Please, please, please. Let something be published someday.' Then it went to, 'Please, please, please. Let somebody read this.'
When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
It's good to have fantasies and creative fantasies, especially.
I've never been one to let others decide what's right for me or my children.
My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!
As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.
When I began to write and used a typewriter, I went through three drafts of a book before showing it to an editor.
I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.
I'm never doing a long novel again, truly.
I loved 'Moneyball,' I thought that was a great Hollywood movie. I like baseball, but I don't know that you have to like baseball to like that. I thought it was really well done.
At the time I wrote 'Forever,' I had a 14-year-old daughter, and she was reading a lot of books about young love.
A novel is about people.
I think divorce is a tragedy, traumatic and horribly painful for everybody. That's why I wrote 'Smart Women.' I want kids to read that and to think what life might be like for their parents. And I want parents to think about what life is like for their kids.
Life goes on if you're one of the lucky ones.
I'm not good at keeping secrets.
After each book, I get panicky. I don't love the reviews. I don't like going through all that, and you would think that, after almost 40 years of writing, I'd have got the hang of it.
I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.
I'm an Obama chick.
What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.
I have the most loyal readers in the world.
If those of us who care about making our own decisions about what to read and what to think don't take a stand, others will decide for us.
The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in jeopardy for defending their students' right to read, to imagine, to question, grows every year.
I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.
