Jenny Han Quotes

When you write for children and young adults, you have much more affect and influence on them than when you write for adults. The books that get us through our childhood stay with us for life.

I want to write books that can truly become a legacy and bring benefits to people.

You like to think with young adults that with your books, a little part of it has reached them and will stay with them. It is great to be part of an eight-year-old's world.

Everyone has a story that they read when they were younger that influenced them.

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

That is the greatest gift my books have given me; what it means and has done for the kids.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

A book doesn't have to be a literary classic, of course, to change us forever.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.

I write for young people because I like them and because I think they are important. Children's books can be mind-stretchers and imagination-ticklers and builders of good taste in a way that adult books cannot, because young people usually come to books with more open minds. It's exciting to be able to contribute to that in a small way.

The wonderful John Avildsen was a hero and father figure who was really present in my life even though we didn't have day-to-day or year-to-year.

Success can be a legacy.

I've impacted peoples' lives in such a way that they'll never forget.

We have lots of heroes today - sportsmen, supermodels, media personalities. They come, they have their 15 minutes of fame, and they go. But the influence of good teachers stays with us. They are the people who really shape our lives.

One should never underestimate the power of books.

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place.

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

The more credible you are, the more confidence people place in you, thereby allowing you the privilege of influencing their lives.

It isn't about being or not being dead, it's about what you leave behind

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.

People had been writing to me and saying, "Can you write something for children?" I felt I couldn't quite do it myself because I never had children.