Jeff Kinney Quotes

I think that the beauty of 'Spud' is that everyone can connect to the character of Spud in so many ways. It's about real experiences that happen to kids all the time.

Some of my favorite memories happened in the 'Boy Meets World' classroom.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.

'Superbad' was such a personal movie.

Of all the novels I've written, my favorite is 'Mick Harte Was Here'.

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.

One of my favorite things about playing Avery Jennings on 'Dog With a Blog' is that I get to play a real teenager who deals with everyday issues.

I'm completely obsessed with Andrew Smith's 'Winger.' A great, hilarious, and moving story.

In young adult novels and children's books, you stay in moment. The story goes through a school year or a weekend. You never get a sense of a future self because the young person has not lived that yet.

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

'Dawson's Creek' was my college experience.

I could talk about 'Lady Bird' for literally the rest of my life! It never gets old.

I had never heard of 'young adult novels,' which I guess are about teenage gangs and the new boy in town or something.

'St. Elmo's Fire' is one of my favorite films. I like the storytelling of those teenage American films. You don't get that now. Teenage American movies are all about sick jokes, puking a lot, arse jokes.

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 come out of your teens, you think you're sussed. But you don't know who you are at 22. You're constantly trying to fit in. You get a little lost.

As people get older, we all know, you get married and you have a child and that becomes your family, but when you're 16 years old, especially, your family is your friends.

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.

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

I like writing about teenagers because it's a time of great change and conflict. Up to then, you accept what your parents tell you.

The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess.

Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps.

I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.