Julianna Baggott Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Memories are like water.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I prefer true over happy now.

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

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