Kids Writing Quotes

#1. My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry.

Kevin DeYoung

#2. With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed.

Jonathan Zittrain

#3. There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

David Bowie

#4. In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there's not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).

John Scalzi

#5. Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

Rick Riordan

#6. I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read 'The Giver' now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.

Lois Lowry

#7. People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.

Jeff Foxworthy

#8. I don't for one second think about the possibility of censorship when I am writing a new book. I know I am a person who cares about kids and who cares about truth and I am guided by my own instincts, and trust them.

Lois Lowry

#9. The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Dr. Seuss

#10. I don't think too much about the audience when I'm writing ... I'm aware that 'Holes' was read by kids as young as 8, up to adults.

Louis Sachar

#11. I feel better in my mind because I'm doing what God made me to do. He said, 'Go write books, Steve, and you'll be happy.' I'm happy now, and that has had an effect on my life and my relationship with my wife and kids and even my friends. I've always wanted to be a writer.

Stephen King

#12. I love writing in first person more than third. I have to basically suspend my own world. I don't exist. I'm just a conduit. So I can be eight years old. I can be the mother of a kid that you find out certain things I'm not going to say.

Terry McMillan

#13. I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job.

Rick Riordan

#14. My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.

Ty Burrell

#15. I met Quincy Jones in Seattle. We were kids together ... liked each other when we met and have been close ever since. He wasn't writing when we met - in fact, I more or less started him off to write; voicing, harmony, and stuff like that.

Ray Charles

#16. 'Harry Potter' opened so many doors for young adult literature. It really did convince the publishing industry that writing for children was a viable enterprise. And it also convinced a lot of people that kids will read if we give them books that they care about and love.

Rick Riordan

#17. I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003.

Stephenie Meyer

#18. I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.

John Gimlette

#19. A lot of (children's literature) beginners get bogged down by morals. A moral should never be driving the story. And a moral should never be confused with a plot. You can't preach to kids, and you can't talk down to them, either. It's amazing how they sense condescension.

Patty Smith

#20. Basically, I am a night owl. My wife is an early bird, so she goes to bed around 9:30, and my kids are in bed about 8. So, if I am home, I will usually start writing about 9:30 and go till about 12:30 or 1:30, depending on what my energy level is.

Barack Obama

#21. The reason I started writing was because I was a little kid in San Diego who was getting beaten up by her dad and sexually abused and because I felt different than everybody else and I had this big huge secret that was tearing me apart.

Dorianne Laux

#22. It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class.

Joan Countryman

#23. Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

Billy Bob Thornton

#24. I'd got married and wanted to have kids, so had kids, brought them up, did other things, and slowly got back into music. And it feels great, having one foot in the present, writing and covering interesting songs, and having one foot in the past.

Kim Wilde

#25. Writing has always been my go-to form of expression. Whenever I was going through something as a kid, I would write it down and I would turn it into a poem.

Jhene Aiko

#26. What I really value about being a writer is that I can go to rehearsal when I want to, and then, when I need to be at home writing or with my kids, I go home.

Sarah Ruhl

#27. Kids are really good at ignoring the heavy-handed message and getting with the fun parts. It's good they are, because adults have devoted a lot of effort writing them message thinly disguised as stories and clubbing children over the head with them.

Jo Walton

#28. Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying.

Kate Klise

#29. People don't write about kids; you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.

Michael Ondaatje

#30. I always say your body is the temple of your spirit, why not decorate it? My kids say, no, no, your body is the temple of your spirit, keep it clean. I'm covered in tattoos and I get a tattoo every time I write a book. I get the tattoo from the book.

Bill Ayers

#31. I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.

Matt Damon

#32. Rich kids who write songs about food stamps always piss me off. I'm not going to write any songs about that, either.

Neko Case

#33. People like to say their songs are like children, but you gotta get those kids out there so they can make some money and pay the rent.

Amanda Shires

#34. The best children's book writers are not people who have kids, but people who write from the child within themselves.

Andrea Brown

#35. I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They're equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both.

Greg Van Eekhout

#36. So many people think that social studies and weird lessons in social studies, teaching kids in America are bad, is it the result of Common Core? And it's not. It's not. Common Core does not deal with social studies. It's basically writing and math.

Megyn Kelly

#37. Strum your guitar sing it kid Just write about your feelings not the things you never did Inexperience, it once had cursed me But your youth is no handicap it's what makes you thirsty

Harry Chapin

#38. What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

Anne McCaffrey

#39. I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldiers but from their kids, especially their kids, it makes it all worthwhile.

Tim O'Brien

#40. I should write a book. I've always wanted to write a book. I should write a book about kids who see dead people.

George Noory

#41. I really like telling stories. When I was a kid, I wanted to write songs. In quite a fundamental, gratifying, childish way, I enjoy the doing of telling a story.

Paul Bettany

#42. Most people say, "Show, don't tell," but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they're like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.

Colson Whitehead

#43. I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.

Norton Juster

#44. As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

Rodman Philbrick

#45. My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?

William Stafford

#46. Part of the joy of writing for kids is that you have to have a real adventure story. You can get really involved in the fantastic in a way that perhaps you can't so much in adult fiction.

Edward Carey

#47. People think, Hey, I love kids, I want to write children's books. But they think children are happy. That's their first mistake. [Messinger, Jonathan. "Guilt for dinner: The Mo Willems interview." Hipsqueak. 5 May 2011. Web. 18 November 2011.]

Mo Willems

#48. He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

Simone De Beauvoir

#49. My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason ... but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.

David Pajo

#50. All my kids play guitar, sing, and dabble with writing.

Patti Scialfa

#51. Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction.

Lloyd Alexander

#52. I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other and there's a real buzz to not only writing about a character I love like Superman, but also writing something that kids can enjoy.

Mark Millar

#53. When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.

John Cleese

#54. I wouldn't describe myself as a do-gooder. That's really more my wife. I'm kind of just the obsessed guy who's been writing and making movies since I was a little kid, just in a room and make it.

M. Night Shyamalan

#55. As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid.

Kola Boof

#56. Kids are naturally inventive and curious and creative, but most adults have had that beaten out of them. Writing is a form of play; you have to get rid of all those internal censors that we adults have, the things that say, 'Don't go there, that's not allowed.'

Monica Ali

#57. I always keep myself busy. I'm writing. Or I'm creating something. Or I'm doing stuff with the kids. I'm up incredibly early in the morning; I go to bed incredibly late at night.

Natascha McElhone

#58. When I'm not writing or working on books as a publisher, I'm doing things that make me happy. One is skiing with my kids and husband. I love sports.

Andrea Davis Pinkney

#59. Our parents are the coolest parents ever. No other generation went on from writing letters to their own parents to sending snapchats to their own kids.

Sharad Vivek Sagar

#60. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages.

Jodi Picoult

#61. I could spend the rest of my life writing and drawing books for kids and be a very happy man.

Daniel Sean Kaye

#62. I don't have kids, a mortgage, or a car. That has let me hold out for the jobs I want to do, and to sit in a cold room in the winter with fingerless gloves, writing.

Alice Lowe

#63. I love just going out; long drives, the ocean, my kids, new music, new gear, new plug-ins, coffee, and donuts at four in the morning. Even just waking up and writing.

John Feldmann

#64. People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think.

C. JoyBell C.

#65. I enjoy writing for both kids and adults, though I think I'm better at children's stories because I was a teacher for so long, and I know that audience well. The process is no different whether I'm writing for children or adults. Really, the elements of making a good story are the same.

Rick Riordan

#66. Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject.

Seymour Papert

#67. I am very active on Twitter and one thing that keeps popping up is "How do I balance having a kid and writing?" And I know it should not be as aggravating, but I know no one ever asks a male writer that. Or, any male that.

Celeste Ng

#68. I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over.

Bob Seger

#69. I started writing songs when I was a little kid actually. I wrote a song about Catwoman and I wrote a song about Leprechauns, as a little kid.

Bonnie McKee

#70. Kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way.

Ray Bradbury

#71. Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#72. A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#73. In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.

Kelis

#74. I cant justify taking money away from hungry kids and needy schools to pay for the Games when corporations are willing to write the checks.

Mary Lou Retton

#75. The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids 5 to 1, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#76. I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing ... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.

Claire Cameron

#77. If I weren't making music, I'd be the kid who writes into the magazines and says, "why don't you guys ever cover anything that's different? Hip hop is so much of the same thing over and over again." I love hip hop, so I wanted to make an album from that standpoint, 'cause that's who I am.

Mike Shinoda

#78. What's my favorite part that I've written? That's like asking me to choose which of my kids is least ugly!

Matthew Catania

#79. These kids will make you cry, laugh ... They make you feel all kinds of emotions through their writings and they share a lot with me, as an instructor, that they might not normally share with other people because they are young artists and they need a platform for pulling that stuff out.

Clinton D. Powell

#80. I'm not a parenting expert by any means, but I've been interviewing and writing about kids for almost 20 years.

Nancy Jo Sales

#81. When I'm writing, I spend all my time in The Grocer on Elgin buying ready-made meals; I think they are the only reason my husband and kids haven't left me.

Sadie Jones

#82. If you can write (and don't kid yourself that you can, if you can't) and you have ideas that are commercially viable and will engage the reader's interest, go for it. Make sure you have something unique to offer. I enjoy the work of writers who give you something you won't find anywhere else.

Joel McIver

#83. The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.

William, Saroyan

#84. I would definitely write to the kid that I was before, to embrace the moment. I think that often times when you're coming of age or growing up you look forward and you work really hard instead of sitting back and relaxing and enjoying the moment.

Sean Mackin

#85. A thank-you card," repeated Alice. "Yes. I know, I know, it's teaching them good manners and everything, but I sort of hate those thank-you cards. I always imagine the kids groaning and having to be forced into writing them. It makes me feel like an elderly aunt.

Liane Moriarty

#86. If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed.

Don Roff

#87. A kid is a guy I never wrote down to. He's interested in what I say if I make it interesting.

Dr. Seuss

#88. It seems to me that not only the writing in most children's books condescends to kids, but so does the art. I don't want to do that.

Chris Van Allsburg

#89. My favourite thing in the world, apart from my wife and kids, is writing songs. Ever since I was a kid.

Richard Hawley

#90. I never go online on my iPhone. Sometimes I'm tempted but I remind myself and the kids - it's a tool. Use it as a tool. You're not the tool. My iPhone, 85% of the time I'm writing down ideas.

Matthew McConaughey

#91. The trick in writing children's books is to set up danger, mystery and excitement on page one. Force the kid to turn the page ... Then in the middle of each chapter there's a dramatic point of excitement, and at chapter's end, a cliffhanger.

Jerry West

#92. One of the things that made me try writing novels was I could take time off to be with the kids. That's the practical side of what I love about the writing life.

Simon Toyne

#93. I spent a lot of time star-gazing, writing, and learning languages when the other kids were doing cooler things in Detroit.

Lizzo

#94. I was writing a third novel when my kids arrived. And I looked at that book about whether these two people would get together, and I thought, 'I don't care! I've got kids!'

Ron Carlson

#95. I think that's pretty crucial for it to succeed and be something more than just something you put your kid in front of and turn on the DVD. We wouldn't have got involved if it were just for little kids. We wanted to write something that works on both levels.

John Francis Daley

#96. People write things in newspapers about me that aren't true - or that are true. They take pictures of my kids on the way to school. I get a little bit inured to it in a way that I think most people probably aren't.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

#97. If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#98. I'm from Ohio, and I wasn't one of those kids who grew up making movies or whatever, but I always wanted to write. I was probably in high school when I realized the things I was writing weren't books; they were movies, they were visual.

David Leslie Johnson

#99. I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don't write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.

Nicholas Sparks

#100. While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

Orson Scott Card