I don’t think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn’t change.
Judy Blume
Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.
Judy Blume
My mother told me once that she had her talk with God whenever she started a new sweater: ‘Please don’t take me in the middle of the sweater.’ And as soon as she finished knitting a sweater, and it was blocked and put together, she already had the wool to start the next sweater so that nothing bad would happen.
Judy Blume
Life goes on if you’re one of the lucky ones.
Judy Blume
Ideas seem to come from everywhere – my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.
Judy Blume
I can’t relate to people who treat me as a ‘famous person.’ I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that’s what I am. All people are really just regular.
Judy Blume
If only there was a vaccine to protect against breast cancer, we’d be lining up – wouldn’t we?
Judy Blume
The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.
Judy Blume
When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother – and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.
Judy Blume
I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won’t come, that nothing will happen.
Judy Blume
I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won’t come, that nothing will happen.
Judy Blume
Parents still have a big influence on their kids – just ask any therapist. No, really, I think the parent is the most important influence on children: It’s how they learn to love and treat other people.
Judy Blume
My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum’s ‘Oz’ series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!
Judy Blume
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
Judy Blume
I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says – it makes me choke up – it says, ‘I’m a Jersey tomato’… I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it.
Judy Blume
I’ll always be grateful for ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.’ It brought me many, many, readers.
Judy Blume
I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.
Judy Blume
I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they’d like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.
Judy Blume
Madeleine L’Engle’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?
Judy Blume
When I started to write, it was the ’70s, and throughout that decade, we didn’t have any problems with book challenges or censorship.
Judy Blume
When a parent comes into school waving a book and saying, ‘Take this book away. I don’t like this book.’ I won’t say in all cases, but in many cases, that will not happen anymore. It has to go through a proper review board. The complaining parent will have to fill out a complaint, you know, put it in writing.
Judy Blume
A good writer is always a people watcher.
Judy Blume
You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don’t have enough time to just sit and daydream.
Judy Blume
I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone.
Judy Blume
In the early ’70s – a very good time for children’s books and their authors – editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
Judy Blume
I am a big defender of ‘Harry Potter,’ and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish, we should be thankful for them.
Judy Blume
My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.
Judy Blume
I am a big defender of ‘Harry Potter,’ and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish, we should be thankful for them.
Judy Blume
When I’m writing, I’m never trying to teach anything – maybe I’m trying to illuminate.
Judy Blume
My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.
Judy Blume
The ’50s were a secretive time.
Judy Blume
I don’t think it’s realistic to say kids shouldn’t watch any TV. I just wish the shows would be better. And that kids would watch less. Get out there and do things, kids! Don’t become couch potatoes!
Judy Blume
I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, ‘Judy, we need a title.’
Judy Blume
I’m really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!
Judy Blume
It’s all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but it’s that determination.
Judy Blume
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.
Judy Blume
I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.
Judy Blume
I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.
Judy Blume
I’m an e-mail junkie though I’m trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.
Judy Blume
I wanted to write what I remembered to be true.
Judy Blume
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
Judy Blume
When I’m writing a book, you can’t think about your audience. You’re going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You’re got to write from deep inside.
Judy Blume
It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.
Judy Blume
I didn’t know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.
Judy Blume
The best books come from someplace inside. You don’t write because you want to, but because you have to.
Judy Blume
I meet people on the street or at book signings and they tend to treat me as if they know me, as if we’re connected. It’s great.
Judy Blume
I love to watch movies.
Judy Blume
The creative process; I enjoy thinking up the stories and situations for my books.
Judy Blume
When I began to write and used a typewriter, I went through three drafts of a book before showing it to an editor.
Judy Blume
I was always a storyteller. I just didn’t know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can’t remember a time when they weren’t there.
Judy Blume
As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.
Judy Blume
The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.
Judy Blume
The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in jeopardy for defending their students’ right to read, to imagine, to question, grows every year.
Judy Blume