Cynthia Voigt
I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.
I'm a big fan of outlining. Here's the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I'm liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages.
One day at my grandmother's house, I discovered 'The Secret Garden' and read it. This was the first book I found entirely for myself, and I cherished it.
By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.
To see what books were available for my older students, I made many trips to the library. If a book looked interesting, I checked it out. I once went home with 30 books! It was then that I realized that kids' novels had the shape of real books, and I began to get ideas for young adult novels and juvenile books.
My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.
I was eighteen when I wrote my first book, and I can't remember what it was called. I have no idea where the manuscript is - I lost it when I was twenty-one.
I do have trouble starting books. I have ideas that I have trouble starting to write. But I'm the kind of person who tends to finish everything she starts out of sheer stubbornness.
I love teaching; I love little kids.
Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.
I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.
I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought.
All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.
Reading was my hobby, my sport and my activity of choice. It was the prime pleasure of my days, an unfailing escape from whatever realities were distressing me, and the only source of pride I knew, other vanities lying beyond my grasp. I couldn't do anything else well, but I could do words.
It's so great to be able to write from home. My bread is rising downstairs, and I'm upstairs writing. I have a writing room that my grandchildren consider one of their playrooms.
My favorite season was when I wrote every morning for three or four hours, then I would go and teach my classes at school, come home to my family and hang out with them, have dinner, and then, after everyone was tucked in, I would prepare for my classes the next day.
I think writing is a part-time career, because otherwise you get a little stale, maybe even self-indulgent, when you have to fill the hours with sentences. I don't think, if I wrote 12 hours a day, my work would be much better.
I used to know kids better because I was teaching in a classroom, but I still have a sense of comfort with them. I don't believe that kids have essentially changed.
She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.Collection: Girl
You could say that all of life is a series of last chances.Collection: Life
People can be unimaginably foolish...and they can be unimaginably grand, at times.Collection: People
You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?Collection: Littles
When a daring idea first crosses one's mind, if it is to be realized in the future it is often appealing. Then, as the time for its execution comes nearer, one begins to dread that which had once been anticipated.Collection: Ideas
...a really good friend, the kind of friend who - when they were together both of them were more able to be who they really were.Collection: Good Friend
If I'm writing by intuition, generally that calculation works itself out. But if I'm writing a mystery, and somebody has to have a reason for doing what he's doing, and it's not anything I can imagine myself wanting to do, things get a little more difficult to write, and careless mistakes are made.Collection: Mistake
Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.Collection: Book
I got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can.Collection: Thinking
I didnt write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.Collection: Book
Maybe life was like a sea, and all the people were like boats ... Everybody who was born was cast into the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions. Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats - they just went along as best they could, trying to find a harbor.Collection: Life
I got used to being a writer. To compare it to teaching - I taught for twenty-five years; for the first two or three years it was heady. I was discovering that I could do something and do it well. Be useful to people. It was exhilarating, sort of like the first two weeks of being in love with somebody, and then it becomes like the third bite of pizza. The first bite is wonderful. The second bite is not disappointing. The third? Meh. You get used to it.Collection: Teaching
The worst things weren't outside of you.Collection: Self
But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess"—Gram laughed a little—"I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them.Collection: Fun
She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.Collection: Skins
I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not anymore.Collection: Who I Am
Hiding under the bed doesn't make the worry stop.Collection: Worry
...When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south," Gran told Birle."Not empty," Granda corrected her. "The forest is never empty.Collection: Maps
Rebellion is necessary for development of character.Collection: Character