"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood."
— Jane Yolen

"Read to Me

Read to me riddles
and read to me rhymes,
read to me stories
of magical times.

Read to me tales
about castles and kings,
read to me stories
of fabulous things.

Read to me pirates,
and read to me knights,
read to me dragons
and dragon-back flights.

Read to me spaceships
and cowboys and then
when you are finished-
please read them again!
"
— Jane Yolen

"'Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.'"
— Jane Yolen (The Books of Great Alta: Comprising 'Sister Light, Sister Dark' and 'White Jenna')

"'Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen."
— Jane Yolen (Briar Rose)

"And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are:

Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth."
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?"
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?"
— Jane Yolen (Armageddon Summer)

"You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya--life--to me."
— Jane Yolen (The Devil's Arithmetic)

"We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us."
— Jane Yolen (The Devil's Arithmetic)

"Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up."
— Jane Yolen

"'No man is my master,' she said. He was shocked into silence. 'No man's gold will fill my bag,' she said, and jangled her bag at him. It was totally empty (158)."
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition."
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole."
— Jane Yolen (Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood)

"Part of her revolted against the insanity of the rules. Part of her was grateful. In a world of chaos, any guidelines helped. And she knew that each day she remained alive, she remained alive. One plus one plus one. The Devil's arithmetic..."
— Jane Yolen

"Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks."
— Jane Yolen

"He was fifteen and could not remember ever crying before, not as a child when his father had died so brutally; not in bond when his mother slipped away so quietly in her sleep; not when Likkarn had tormented him with the memory of his father's death under the feral claws. He sobbed-- for this lost chance, for the death of Blood Brother, for the aching sores on his back, and even with the remembered pain of his parents' loss (45)"
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"'I never considered. I never considered--' he began. 'I mean, I never thought that once I was a master, it meant I could own bonders. I don't think I want that. I don't think I want that at all.' 'Well, what did you think being a master meant?' asked Errikkin, incredulously. 'I thought it meant, well, being free. And doing what you wanted when you wanted. Like sleeping late. Or like training your own dragon...' (135)."
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"Passover isn't about eating, Hannah," her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers through her silver-streaked hair. "You could have fooled me," Hannah muttered."
— Jane Yolen (The Devil's Arithmetic)

"But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She's been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason...Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning."
— Jane Yolen (The Devil's Arithmetic)