Jennifer Haigh Quotes & Sayings

Watching, I dread my own womanhood, the day when I too will follow along carrying bags of groceries, my mission wherever I go to feed other people who take actual part in life while I am simply the catering staff. — Jennifer Haigh

'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do. — Jennifer Haigh

The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives ... he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer. — Jennifer Haigh

I open my heart to her and lay it on the table. — Jennifer Haigh

I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself ... — Jennifer Haigh

I was raised in a Catholic family, spent twelve years in parochial schools, and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy. — Jennifer Haigh

I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands. — Jennifer Haigh

I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child. — Jennifer Haigh

More than anything in life, she wishes she'd let him. That she'd smiled for the camera. That she'd said yes. Life was gone before you knew it;how foolish she'd been to refuse any of it. — Jennifer Haigh

Sooner or later you have to decide what you believe. It was a thing I'd always known but until recently had forgotten: that faith is a decision. In its most basic form, it is a choice. — Jennifer Haigh

Working in a prison, is, to my mind, similar in ways to working in a coal mine. It's going to scare away a lot of people. — Jennifer Haigh

That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left? — Jennifer Haigh

As a young writer, I learned a lot about grammatical structure from reading plays, from performing the plays. I think that was a wonderful apprenticeship. — Jennifer Haigh

Destiny, she'd learned, was written in the heavens; a person couldn't take what the universe didn't wish to give. — Jennifer Haigh

But his singing was unconscious and irrepressible - an expression of his native exuberance, the dreamy, buoyant soundtrack running through his head. — Jennifer Haigh

Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true. — Jennifer Haigh

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy. — Jennifer Haigh

I have great respect for writers who are humble, whose language allows the reader to see the story but doesn't get in the way. Language is a window, and if the window is clean, you shouldn't be aware you're looking through glass. — Jennifer Haigh

William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place. — Jennifer Haigh

The story of my family ... changes with the teller. — Jennifer Haigh

I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'. — Jennifer Haigh

Growing up, I didn't know anybody who didn't have a miner in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners. — Jennifer Haigh

His words stayed with her for years. Each night as she lay waiting for sleep, she tried to re-create the evening in her mind - the tone of his voice, his hand on her shoulder. Soon the memory was worn as an old photograph, the edges fuzzy from frequent handling; she worried that she'd gotten the words wrong, forgotten some nuance of his face or voice. Finally she wondered if she'd made the whole thing up. — Jennifer Haigh

It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog. — Jennifer Haigh

When they touched it was like touching her own body. From childhood they had been the same height; their arms and legs and hands were still perfectly congruent. Only the centers of them were different, aching, fascinated, every part of them heated to the same temperature as the sun warmed pond. — Jennifer Haigh

I believed, after writing 'Mrs. Kimble,' that I knew how to write a novel. I quickly discovered that I only knew how to write that novel. 'Baker Towers' was a different beast entirely; and I felt as though I had to learn to write all over again. — Jennifer Haigh