Julianna Baggott
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.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: 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.Collection: Courage
The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.'
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.
While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.
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.
I'm a woman, but I've been a sexist, too.
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.
I prefer a cluttered workspace.
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.'
I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
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 write across genres so I see them, more often, as complementary instead of separated by boundaries.
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.
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.
A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.
Don't shame the young for releasing their pent-up fear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.Collection: Mistake
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.Collection: Children
Some of the best work done to combat the Republicans has been wit and humor.Collection: Done
I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.Collection: Praying
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.Collection: Heart
I'm about to start something new. I'm waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.Collection: Waiting
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.Collection: Love Is
Sometimes you meet someone and you know that your life will be different from then on.Collection: Different
I have faith in human beings. I struggle with that faith.Collection: Struggle
Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.Collection: Giving Up
The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.Collection: Plot
But there it is: Everyone is alone, for life, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.Collection: Bad Things
My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Motivation
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.Collection: Husband
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?Collection: Mother
Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?Collection: Want
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 toolsCollection: Heart
Our love is our burden.Collection: Love Is
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.Collection: Believe
Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.Collection: Voice
Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.Collection: Bottles