QuoteProject
When I'm writing, I'm never trying to teach anything - maybe I'm trying to illuminate.
Judy Blume
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights that the purpose of writing is not to instruct but to shed light on ideas and experiences.

Judy Blume expresses that her intention as a writer is not to impart lessons or explicitly teach her readers; rather, she aims to illuminate thoughts and feelings, inviting readers to explore and understand themselves and the world more deeply. This perspective emphasizes the role of writing as a form of exploration and connection rather than straightforward education.

Themes

WritingIlluminationExpressionCreativityLiterature

In practice

Example use cases

A teacher might share this quote during a writing workshop to inspire students.

More from Judy Blume

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
Judy BlumeRead
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
Judy BlumeRead
What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.
Judy BlumeRead
Concentrate on how good if feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, just to smell the air, and feel the wind in your face
Judy BlumeRead
I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.
Judy BlumeRead
Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.
Judy BlumeRead

Similar quotes

When I was born in 1942, World War II was still going. And I began to realize when I became a young adult that if we don't teach our kids a better way of relating to their fellow human beings, the very future of humanity on the planet is in jeopardy.
Graham NashRead
I think I'm always subconsciously trying to write the ideal school play. Lots of parts for everybody, great parts for women - don't forget, more girls try out than boys in the school play; everyone gets to be in the school play.
Lin-Manuel MirandaRead
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
William ZinsserRead
Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.
Eleanor RooseveltRead
A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.
Carl LinnaeusRead
An academic discipline, or any other semiotic domain, for that matter, is not primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices. It is in these practices that 'content' is generated, debated, and transformed via certain distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and, often, writing and reading.
James Paul GeeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.