Judy Blume Quotes

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I'm very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don't see how they'll survive - why don't we just all go to the movies or watch television.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

You come out of your MFA program with a cogent clutch of stories, trying to get an agent interested, and she or he admits these are quality, sure, but this agent actually needs something the publisher can make money on. So you get kind of bullied by the market into writing a novel.

The advent of ebooks is no more going to kill the pleasure of reading than the introduction of the internal combustion engine made horses extinct.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

I was always very proud of myself that I could wrest emotion from a doll or a puppet. It never occurred to me that I could find real emotion in a person.

I spend so long writing each of my novels that by the time I'm done with one, I'm ready to discover a totally different world.

I think really good drama comes down to real human emotion. That's what makes us all tick, and that's what I've always been drawn to when it comes to scripts is real human emotion and dealing with that.

I have a novel out, 'Lupus Rex,' that I wrote and am excited about that.

Because we fail to listen to each other's stories, we are becoming a fragmented human race.

For me, storytelling is all about how we learn about each other. I'm so curious about people, what makes them tick, why they are who they are, and how we all relate to each other, despite the fact that we may not think that we do.

Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.

Some people consider the practice of love and compassion is only related to religious practice and if they are not interested in religion they neglect these inner values. But love and compassion are qualities that human beings require just to live together.

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is fro+m among such individuals that all human failures spring.

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

In writing ... remember that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.

I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.

A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

The truth is, rarely can a response make something better - what makes something better is connection.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

I love energy and people; gosh I love people even when they got on my nerves.