Julianna Baggott famous quotes

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

#Target Market #Target #Boundaries

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

#Mistake #Way #Sometimes

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Love Is #Luxury #People

I prefer a cluttered workspace.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Clutter #Workspace

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

#Praying

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

#Different #Sometimes

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Art #Dirty #Book

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Love #Average #Hands

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Heart #Differences #People

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

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

#Years #Stronger #Fans

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Children #Ideas #Profound

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

#World #Obsession #Mutual

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Lying #Omission #Sin

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

#Giving Up #Past #Weakness

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

#Demand #Let Him Go #Release

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

#Fall #Love Is #Giving

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Running #Believe #Men

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

#Looks #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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Lying #Real #Giving

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Grandfather #Sorrow #Doe

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?
-- Julianna Baggott

#Mother #Giving #Stories

Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?
-- Julianna Baggott

#Want

Memories are like water.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Memories #Water

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

#Too Much #Feels

I prefer true over happy now.
-- Julianna Baggott

Our love is our burden.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Love Is #Our Love #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
-- Julianna Baggott

#Heart #Personality #Tools

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Real #Book #Ideas

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Art #Writing #Character

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Writing #Bored #Childhood

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Believe #Past #Evil

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Strong #Children #Imagination

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Sports #Winning #Years

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Mean #Imagination #Catholic

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

#Writing #Thinking #Trying

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Motivation #Writing #Giving

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Real #Men #Thinking

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Passion #Writing #Agonizing

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Character #Stories #Ears

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Wall #Wings #Office

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

#Shame #Young

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Sex #Catholic #Abuse

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

#Writing #Boundaries #Genre

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

#Sexist

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.
-- Julianna Baggott

#Writing #Men #Want

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

#Loss #Years #Next Year

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

#Storytelling #Shows

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

#College #Catholic #Becoming

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

#Born

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

#Lying #Writing #Stories