Jenny Han Quotes

My whole life, as an adult as well, I've been attracted to stories about young people. This period of time is so fertile - there's a million things that are happening, a million firsts, and to be able to witness that and record that is a privilege.

I've realized that I will probably write about teenagers and that time in people's lives - I'll probably come back to it a lot.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

When I did 'Fast Times,' I felt very close emotionally to the characters. I liked those characters because they all had to work, so they were dealing with adult problems even though they were very immature, and I could relate to that.

I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.

When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings.

It's always a really great feeling when I talk to people who watched 'Jett Jackson' because we were the same age. We were all kids. I was 13 when I started working on that show, and that was part of my childhood.

Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.

The Wood was about young people and the other one is more of a grown up movie.

Adapting a Judy Blume book is something I really wanted to do, and you couldn't grow up in the '90s without knowing about 'Tiger Eyes' and reading it. It should've been assigned to all teenage girls.

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.

I'd never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I've actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I've written.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

There aren't a lot of films about adolescents or quote-unquote coming-of-age films that are realistic nowadays.

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

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.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

'Lives' is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material - and after that, you're not sure what you can do.

I always wanted to make a coming-of-age film, or something about growing up, like 'The Wonder Years,' 'Stand By Me' or 'Diner.'

For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

There's so many great coming-of-age movies to steal from, and I feel like I just tried to steal from them all equally.

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 think I draw most inspiration from writers like Richelle Mead and filmmakers like John Hughes. They both really understand the experience of being a teenager and how insistent and intense everything feels, but they're also smart, savvy, and fun.