Judy Blume Quotes

I think I am attracted to that time in life when your worldview is still forming in small ways.

My parents are pretty liberal. But they were just you know trying to look out for my innocence or whatever. But my babysitter had "Forever" [by Judy Blume]. And I said "Well I've read Judy Blume books, can I borrow that?" And she said no, this one's not appropriate for you. Which obviously, got me really worked up. So I took it.

When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

Hey, don't knock Judy Blume. Without her, my younger self would never have been able to decode the random acts of madness perpetrated by the fascinating creature known as the teenage girl.

They were the books to read, 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings.' A rite of passage going through life.

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.

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.

We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I don't think there's any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that.

For everybody in the world, the answers to the mysteries in your life usually lie in your childhood, your upbringing, and your parents.

I have a nostalgia for the years I was growing up and experiencing new things for the first time - so the late '80s and early '90s are always fascinating to me. Those were the times that I was being informed about a lot of my tastes, and so the memories are fused with a lot of emotion.

I loved everything about being ten, eleven, and twelve years old, and seem to make most of my heroines and heroes that age so I can reexperience all those pitfalls and wonderful discoveries. It helps me to figure out my own life when I write from that eleven year old place!

Coming-of-age stories in high school are exciting because everything that happens during that time is very heightened.

I was a kid, and I was very excited to experience this whole new world. And everything was fun, everything from, oh, wow, we get bananas - I'd only seen them in picture books, you know - to, like, the diversity of the neighborhood and to explore Judaism for the first time. It was really hushed in the Soviet Union.

I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

I love histories. I love learning. I love books that talk about people who made a real impact on history, because it always has to do with who they were at that time and what their personalities were like and what their strengths and weaknesses were.

Growing maturity is marked by the increasing liberties we take with our travelling... we made the discovery (some people never make it) that real books can be taken on a journey and that hours of golden reading can so be added to its other delights.

I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it.

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.

There are books... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.