Writing Kids Quotes

#1. I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

Ellen Potter

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

Dr. Seuss

#3. I always joke that my kids' favorite holiday is Father's Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It's my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

Wayne Dyer

#4. I studied writing at NYU. I graduated high school in Nashville and then went to the creative writing program, and in the first year, that's when I wrote 'Kids.'

Harmony Korine

#5. I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

Gayle Forman

#6. I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.

David Mitchell

#7. I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd. I didn't have a ton of academic skills. It wasn't until I was in high school that I was like, "I guess I like writing dialogue." So that's how I got into it.

Mindy Kaling

#8. I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity.

Adora Svitak

#9. I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.

Jeff Kinney

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.

Natalie Babbitt

#13. I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of writing novels when I was 8 or 12. I wanted to be a film director. I wanted to make big action movies. I loved movies like 'Die Hard,' 'Predator,' 'Aliens,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

Matthew Reilly

#14. My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.

Jean Craighead George

#15. It's the witching hour once more-
When the Muse comes out to play.
He calls me through that magic door-
Where galaxies of worlds await!

Belle Whittington

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old.

Michael Patrick Hearn

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

Kevin DeYoung

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

Lizzo

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. Between writing, traveling, speaking, preaching, and doing my best to be a good husband to my wife and my three kids, that's about as much as one man or at least this man can do.

Tullian Tchividjian

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.

R.L. Stine

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms.

Jodi Picoult

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

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

Richard Hawley

#40. When you live from freelance check to freelance check, your mind is always on "What's the next piece I'm going to write, or draw, that'll pay this month's rent?" And so going out to play ball with my kids was a low priority.

Al Jaffee

#41. The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?

Maurice Sendak

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. When I first started, everything happened at once. I became religious, my musical career took off, I got married, I had kids, and all that happened within the course of a year. I had an excitement about this newly found faith, and so I was writing about that in a very evident kind of way.

Matisyahu

#50. I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn't annoy parents. I used The Beatles 'Rocky Raccoon' as sort of a starting place for my writing.

Jewel

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

Don Roff

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. I always say about my daughters, they save me from my miserable self. They take me out, you know, a comedian, you could live in your head a lot. And you're writing and you're doubting. But when I'm with my kids and my family, it's all about them.

Chris Rock

#55. I loved doing school musicals [as a kid], I even started at an early age to write little plays for the school to perform. I was not just keen on that, it was during that time, during the school period then from an early age, that I began to dream about acting.

George Ogilvie

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

Olivia Wilde

#61. When we've decided to tell the truth in a story, we should tell good, strong versions of it, proper versions that kids can do something with.

Celine Kiernan

#62. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.

Jennifer McMahon

#63. Everything in me wanted to just cross out that ridiculous 3.5-hour scheduled writing appointment and go eat fries in the midst of colored plastic tubes and screaming kids.

Lysa TerKeurst

#64. I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I'd written, I don't want to leave that behind.

J.K. Rowling

#65. 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.

#66. 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

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

Ursula K. Le Guin

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.

Rick Riordan

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. I was kind of an outcast in school 'cause I always kept to myself and was writing poetry and then going on tour with my brother band all the time, so kids didn't know what to make of me.

Christina Perri

#75. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.

Sanjeev Bhaskar

#76. Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.

Ray Bradbury

#77. 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

#78. A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

Gary Oldman

#79. 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

#80. 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

#81. 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

#82. Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.

Sinclair Lewis

#83. 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

#84. 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

#85. 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

#86. I'm a very melody-driven writer and I have a rule that I don't write anything down because if I can't remember the melody than it wasn't worth remembering. So it's my way to test myself in the studio. When I was a kid I could sing pretty well so melody always made a lot of sense to me.

Justin Timberlake

#87. 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

#88. I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over.

Stephen King

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. I was writing and I have three kids. I was occupying my time with them but it was difficult.

Alison Moyet

#92. I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write.

Jodi Picoult

#93. When I went to school, I was already reading and writing. In fact, I was offended that the other kids couldn't.

Eoin Colfer

#94. 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

#95. 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

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

Daniel Sean Kaye

#97. 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

#98. I like when they say a movie is inspired by a true story. That's kind of silly. "Hey, Mitch, did you hear that story about that lady who drove her car into the lake with her kids and they all drowned?" "Yeah, I did, and you know what - that inspires me to write a movie about a gorilla!"

Mitch Hedberg

#99. 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

#100. The best memories on tour are always of kids who tell me they are going to run back to their classrooms and start writing!

Doreen Cronin