109 Quotes by Jesse Andrews

Writing is more important than being a writer.

There's a certain trope in young adult fiction. A young girl gets cancer and becomes this radiant person who's a fountain of insight. Everyone who encounters her is changed for the better. That doesn't happen all the time. The whole thing is much more difficult to process. Adults have trouble with it, so why shouldn't we expect teens to?

Young adults are honest readers. They won't stay with a book unless they have a reason, so it has to move along.

I watched a ton of films growing up, but in a haphazard way. There was nothing scholarly or focused about it.

As a teenager, I was undeveloped and out of touch. The arts was another arena in which to do combat and challenge myself. I read difficult books like James Joyce's 'Ulysses,' but I didn't really understand it, and no one was going to call me on it because I was 16.

It wasn't until I got to college and had a lot of my ego beaten out of me... That's when I started to turn to literature as something deeper than a way to put up points.

You show up at high school, there's all these kids you don't know, and you're terrified that people will have some kind of wrong or unpleasant impression of you. You just don't want anything to ruin your public persona, because you actually have a public persona in high school.

Hebrew School was my first introduction to real feminism. I remember that much more than I remember any kind of actual religious teaching.

I fought tooth and nail: I didn't want to learn Hebrew. My Bar Mitzvah came around, and I didn't want to read the Torah portion. I look back with a lot of chagrin about how I behaved.