"Shai's Uncle Won had taught her that being bested was a rule of life. No matter how good you were, someone was better. Live by that knowledge, and you would never grow so confident that you became sloppy."

-Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul

"...if there is one truism of successful Y.A., it’s that the book’s unrelenting emphasis must be on character and event, and not the brilliance of the author’s viewpoint. For me it was a humbling experience, trying to shed the essential narcissism of my writer’s project because my teen readers wouldn’t tolerate it. But on crawling out on the other side, I saw that what Y.A. novels value above all else is storytelling. It took me even longer to realize that that needn’t lessen a book’s complexity — it just prioritizes the reader’s experience. Ultimately, if there’s a refrain I hear from the many adults turning to Y.A., it’s not that the books are any simpler. They’re just more pleasurable."

Eliot Schrefer, "Junior Varsity is Where the Work Gets Done"

This is a great article about writing YA lit.

Miranda!

"I made this foolish mistake of going jogging. Is this something you ever do? It's wrong. No one should run unless professionally or as a child. That should be it."

-Miranda Hart
(who plays Chummy on 'Call the Midwife')

Miranda Hart isn't just Chummy, she's a comedian and the star of her own sitcom, called 'Miranda.'



Watch it on Hulu!  She also has a book called Is It Just Me? (which I hear is best in audiobook format)

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."


           -Ursula Le Guin

What makes someone an Angeleno?

"For my own self definition, it's that I live in a place that's a small country, and I can go to all different kinds of places in my country and find different people, different landscapes, different architecture."

-Eloise Klein Healy, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles in this interview.

"There are times now when I feel like I'm struggling upstream myself. Just before we set out on this adventure, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. My immune system has gone haywire and is attacking my joints. It's been moving around from shoulder to hip to knees to feet, raising hell on some days. It's not something I like to talk about, even with Isaac. When it really flares up I have to stop, and I know my pain is just as hard on him. But I was not gonna miss this journey. You make your choices and take your chances. Life comes with no guarantees. I choose an adventure with hardship over no adventure at all every time."

-Bjornen Babcock, River of No Return (a PBS Nature documentary of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho)

    She liked the word ineffable because it meant a feeling so big or vast that it could not be expressed in words.

   And yet, Because it could not be expressed in words, people had invented a word to express it, and that made Liesl feel hopeful, somehow.

-Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver

"The boy I loved didn't know I existed. Then again, he was obsessed with Camus, so he didn't know if any of us existed."

-David Levithan

"Sir Richard, life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous."

-The Dowager Countess, Downton Abbey

"Not everybody can pursue their dreams. Someone has to work."

-Will Gardner, The Good Wife