Top 50 Rebecca Serle Quotes

I really am so grateful to get to do what it is I love – build worlds. Most of my job is playing make-believe, getting to know the people in my head, and letting them help me tell their stories.

The first thing I thought when I finished Ernest Cline’s ‘Ready Player One’ was, ‘My God, it’s the grown-up’s ‘Harry Potter.” Now this is from a mega ‘HP’ fan, so I mean business, here.

I remember what it feels like to be fourteen or sixteen, to have the world folded out in front of you, and to have a million choices ahead. I also remember what it feels like to be so open and impressionable and to want something so badly it’s impossible to see that maybe it isn’t the best thing for you.

My favorite ‘Eloise’ book is probably ‘Eloise in Paris.’

Children’s authors have to pick words that reflect the spirit of a book and convey its message but also words that light children up, that children will recognize. Words that inspire and comfort. Words that challenge yet don’t patronize. Words that, well, mean something to them.

When someone around you succeeds, it does not mean they’ve taken that spot from you. What it means is that you are in the atmosphere of someone who is creating.

Everyone has a story to tell, and in a perfect world, everyone would get the opportunity to tell it. Some of us have the stories, some of us have the words, and some of us have both. Let’s honor the portions we bring to the table and give credit where credit is due.

Let me get something straight: I have no problem with ghostwriting as a thing unto itself. What bothers me is the way it’s shrouded in secrecy, ignored to the point of straight-up lying. Why not be honest?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: writing picture books is an art – the art of word choice.

I don’t have to mumble something under my breath when someone asks me what I do anymore. I can just say, definitively, ‘I’m an author.’ And the best part? That’s not a myth. That’s just the truth.

Writing isn’t manual labor. Nor is it emptying the dishwasher or paying bills. It’s work, sure, but sometimes it should be fun.

The adult fiction and writing for children portions of my MFA program were kept very separate, and there was a stigma around those ‘kid people.’

That’s the funny thing about time. It is only in looking back that it’s easy to connect the dots. To see exactly why everything needed to happen the way that it did.

I certainly think that there’s a little bit of me in all of my characters, because I feel like the only way you can write is if you put a little bit of yourself in there.

We need to take a far more active role in love than ‘Romeo and Juliet’ would lead us to believe. Perhaps that’s what Shakespeare’s saying, in a way. We can’t leave it all up to fate.

Of course YA authors have a responsibility to their audience.

If you see someone struggling, offer input. If someone comes to you with a question, don’t assume they should seek a higher up for the answer.

Seriously, I am a terrible plotter when it comes to my novels. Terrible. I love to kind of feel my way into a book.

My first novel, ‘When You Were Mine,’ was a very, very personal story and drew a lot on the people in my life and the relationships that I had.

It’s devastating when that happens, when someone just ups and leaves for no reason, but love does sometimes go wrong.

Whenever someone asks me for career advice, I always tell them to find a mentor. Find someone who has done what you want to do, and study the way they got there.

Shakespeare is so fundamental to the way we see story. A tremendous amount of narratives come from him – more than many authors are aware, I think.

At its best, writing is a dialogue. It’s one of the things I love about children’s: the fact that this dialogue is really there from the get-go, from the start of writing.

I always say it’s a shame picture books get such a bad rep. Illustrations are tough to sell older kids on!

I love that the collapse of The Other Side is being felt in both ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and ‘The Originals’ universes – as someone who is a fan of both shows, it’s very fun to watch.

I was lucky to have made it to 23 before my world fell apart, but when it did, I had no idea how to survive. It was a rough year. I cried – a lot. I complained – a lot. I also wrote – a lot.

I first moved to New York, like many twenty-somethings before me, to be a grown up. I was attending an MFA program in the city, starting work at a nonfiction imprint at a reputable publishing house, and excited about being on track to becoming the writer I had always wanted to be.

No love story ends or begins out of accordance with how it needs to go.

Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.

The truth is there are people who love horror movies. I don’t happen to be one of those people.

Defining success is an ongoing challenge.

I have often said that I think children’s books are like poetry. Finding the exact right words to tell a story is something all writers, regardless of genre, are challenged to do, but it is in children’s that the art of selection really becomes an art.

For many writers, selling a book is the ultimate dream.

I think that one of the reasons Shakespeare withstands the test of time is that his themes are so universal.

I am a young adult author, and so are quite a few of my friends. We all write books for the same demographic; many of us are even published by the same publishing house. Two of us, in fact, share the same editor.

Part of the job of a children’s author is to write books that will be remembered, definitely, but if I might go out on a limb, I will say that the other part, the more important part, is to build books that will help children fall in love with reading. That, to me, is the real job.

Some of these love stories can be destructive as examples of what it means to really love. To think that someone is your one and only, that you’re fated to be with this person, is a really powerful, sexy fantasy – but it is a fantasy, at least in part.

I love anything by Deb Caletti. She’s my absolute favorite young adult author. I love Ally Carter as well.

So many tend to brand the Internet as the downfall of youth, but ‘Ready Player One’ hints that it’s more complicated than that.

It was always a dream of mine to create a show.

If you’re applying for a creative position, don’t be afraid to get a little creative on your resume.

When it comes to vampires, Daniel Gillies’s Elijah is the cream of the crop. Since leaving ‘The Vampire Diaries’ to headline ‘The Originals,’ we’ve seen the brother of Klaus grow from the altruistic, steadfast, suit-wearing stud into a complicated, nuanced lead.

‘Ready Player One’ has it all – nostalgia, trivia, adventure, romance, heart, and, dare I say it, some very fascinating social commentary. The novel follows Wade Watts through the virtual reality world, the OASIS, and on a quest to uncover and unlock the secrets buried deep inside.

When I write novels, it’s just me alone in a room.

Writing is probably the least glamorous profession there is. This doesn’t change when you become an author.

If you want to be a writer, first and foremost, you must write. If you write, you’re a writer. Period.

‘Goodnight Moon’ is a staple of any nursery bookshelf. So, too, are ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ and ‘Madeline.’ These books are just as much a part of mainstream reading culture as ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ and they are passed down from generation to generation.

You don’t write a book. You write a sentence and then a paragraph and then a page and then a chapter. Looking at writing 400 plus pages or seventy thousand odd words is incredibly daunting, but if you just focus on the immediate picture – say, 500 words – it’s not so overwhelming.

Picture books have terrible PR amongst the children of this country. Ask any librarian: after a certain age, children just aren’t interested in the picture book section anymore. It’s filled with moms, strollers, and unbalanced toddlers.

I don’t watch horror films, because I don’t want those images in my psyche, and I resent having them forced on me before a movie of my choosing.