Best 83 quotes of Julianna Baggott on MyQuotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 prefer a cluttered workspace.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Our love is our burden.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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