Julianna Baggott Quotations

Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

Writers are socially observant. We find people endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. Sometimes it's hard to stop staring at the strut and squawk of my fellow man. They can be quite inspiring. Sometimes it's hard to stop talking to them to see what in the world they're thinking.

No matter what losses happen in a given season, the Red Sox always have next year.

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.

I am politically pro-choice, but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large - especially this world, so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal life and death decisions for others - nor do I believe they should be made by a church run by childless men.

If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.

Our imaginations are strong as children. Sometimes they get shoved aside, these imaginations. They get dusty and mildewed with age. The imagination is a muscle that has to be put to use or it shrivels.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I'm a woman, but I've been a sexist, too.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

Basically if you burst into my office the walls themselves will flutter as if alive - maybe that's the reason for all the wings in 'Pure.

Don't shame the young for releasing their pent-up fear.

I am deeply Catholic and always will be, but I'm no longer a member of the church. I left in 2003 because of the sex abuse scandal.

I write across genres so I see them, more often, as complementary instead of separated by boundaries.

The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.

While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.

Writers aren't born properly labeled so it is hard to know one when one appears.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven't learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.

I'm about to start something new. I'm waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.

You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make.

My childhood was marked by the great fear of nuclear holocaust. We practiced our Civil Defense Drills, lining up in hallways, curled to the floor, but we knew we'd die or, worse, survive only to suffer radiation and slow death.

The fact is there are many women who nod politely, even agree openly within their male-dominated often highly educated cultures, but vote their own minds.

Women are constantly underestimated in our power, our reach, our collective pull.

I believe that one of the most damning things about our culture is the adage to never talk religion and politics. Because we don't model this discourse at the dinner table and at Thanksgiving, we don't know how to do it well and we're not teaching our children about the world and about how to discuss it.

Some of the best work done to combat the Republicans has been wit and humor.

If men are paid/praised more than women for the same work than it always pays to allow the man to have more freedom to pour himself into his work - think of athletes, actors over the age of 28, lawyers, accountants, college deans...

When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.

I don't know when I'm writing dark. I don't know when I'm writing funny or even heartbreaking. I'm always just trying to write it true.

Sometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.

I wrote before I could write. I got my hands on a journal, maybe a hand-me-down; I had three older siblings. My first entries are in the handwriting of the sister closets in age (5 years my senior). She must have gotten tired of my dictations because she gave up and then my blocky scrawl shows up. I wrote plays as a kid mostly.

Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.

My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.

I have faith in human beings. I struggle with that faith.

I believe we're brutes, but then, miraculously, there are those among us who stand up against that brutishness and remind us of the goodness we're capable of.

Being cross-genre, you can encounter an image and decide not only how to best express it but what form would express it best.

I don't have a favorite. I need different genres at different times.

Each genre has something to teach me about the others. Not all the lessons are transferable, but many of the most important ones are.

Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.

I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.

Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.

My oldest sister was an actress living in NYC by the time I was ten, and desperately wanted to be the one in charge of the words.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.

She let him go once. Every day demands that she release him over and over again.

You learn to exploit genre for the more important things - to my mind - like story, character, image, language.

I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?

Sometimes you meet someone and you know that your life will be different from then on.

First, you hand over some basics-overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliché, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding.

I prefer true over happy now.

Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.

Our love is our burden.

So far, I should be calm and more specifically not like that...Anything else? Would you like to do surgery on my personality? How about open-heart surgery? I´ve got some tools

The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot...

Love is selfless, it is a weakness, a giving in, a constant falling.

Memories are like water.

The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.

Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough.

She knows that whispers can be useful. Sometimes they contain real information. But usually they're fairy tales and lies. This is the worst kind of whisper, the kind that draws you in, gives you hope.

She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.

The generation of women who came before us did much of our shouting. They laid the groundwork and now we can be calm and constant and steady.

Our stories are what we have,” Our Good Mother says. “Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?

Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?

Are there books about us or something?” This makes Pressia angry - the idea that this world is a subject of study, a story, instead of filled with real people, trying to survive.

I want to keep looking at ways to stride forward with positivity.

But there it is: Everyone is alone, for life, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.

When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual

The truth is that for those 86 long years when the Red Sox went without a World Series win, fans were not only in a recession, but trapped in a longstanding, deeply entrenched sports depression.

Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.

If you look at the world one way, it takes from you - it's a thief of time, energy, creative mojo. But if you look at the world another way, it gives you an endless supply of motivation.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.

I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.

I've left the Church - for many reasons that I've written about publicly - but it's still a large part of my identity, and I still have my faith, if not my Church.

I'm a writer of faith. I was raised Catholic, and I have a deeply Catholic imagination.

People know the difference between good and evil in their hearts-if they search them. Religions twist good and evil. Their differences are the kind that need to be taught because they aren't natural.

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.

Love is a luxury. It's something that people are allowed to indulge in when they're not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.

Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.