Julianna Baggott Quotes & Sayings

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

Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing. — Julianna Baggott

The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work. — Julianna Baggott

[She] knows that it's fear that keeps her love in check. but what if falling in love i a sign not of weakness but of courage? what if it isnt falling or crashing but taking a leap? — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

The truth that writers secretly harbor is that all books are failures. We try to do something that can't be done. Words. Is that all we rely on? Smudgy ink marks on a page? Pallid wisps and blotches? Text as scaffolding trying to hold up worlds? Actually, no, it's not all we rely on. What's worse is our reliance on the reader. A writer is forever locked in an interdependent relationship. It's like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river - our flimsy words and their frail, overreaching imaginations. The bridge will never meet in the middle. It's not possible. Sometimes you haven't even decided on the same river. The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis missed in the middle by a matter of inches the first time around. They tried again and made it. Writers know we never will. — Julianna Baggott

People never outgrow wanting to be liked for being who they truly are, especially when they've grown up in the limelight or its shadowy edge. — Julianna Baggott

Sometimes your secrets are your only value. — Julianna Baggott

The bombs disrupted molecular structures. The cocktails included the distribution of nanotechnology to help to speed up the recovery of the earth - nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules. The nanotechnology, speed up by DNA, which is an informational material but also excellent at the self-assembly of cells, made our fusing stronger. And the nanotechnology that hit the humans trapped in rubble or scorched land helped them to regenerate. — Julianna Baggott

Father can be the person you most hate and most fear, yes, but deep down you expect that he'll be the one to save you. — Julianna Baggott

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

Our stories are what we are. Our stories preserve us. We give them to one another. Our stories have value — Julianna Baggott

She feels sick. She hates this world. — Julianna Baggott

We each have a story. They did this to us. There was no outside aggressor. They wanted an Apocalypse. They wanted the end. And they made it happen. It was orchestrated - who got in, who didn't. There was a master list. We weren't on it. We were left here to die. They want to erase us, the past, but we can't let them. — Julianna Baggott

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

Memories are like water. — Julianna Baggott

She started telling Lyda stories, odd nameless placeless stories, about the man and the woman, myths or memories, perhaps from her own childhood. — Julianna Baggott

I'd always wanted to know what it was like. Happiness. — Julianna Baggott

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

You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

I miss art. I miss art. Life would be worth living if I had art. — Julianna Baggott

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

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 ... — Julianna Baggott

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

His wings - she's never seen them fully spread, massive and strong. She wants to tell him that this is how he was meant to be - as wrong as it was for her to do this to him, as wrong as it feels, he is this person in this moment, and there's nothing more beautiful. — Julianna Baggott

I always doubt people ... I've survived by not believing in other human beings. — Julianna Baggott

I have faith in human beings. I struggle with that faith. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

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

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

Part of the post-apocalyptic, dystopian trend is that it seems to go hand in hand with young adult novels. Maybe that's because it's not simply the adults who are aware of the current crisis. Teens are the ones who are being told, again and again, that their futures are in jeopardy. The teen years can feel dystopian even in the best of times. But I don't think we realize how much pressure and feeling of doom we're passing down to our teens. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

How do you know me?" she says.
He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says.
"You were what?" she asks.
"I was," he says again. "And now I'm not. — Julianna Baggott

My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story. — Julianna Baggott

Now I feel like we weren't made for each other. We're making each other
into the people we should become. — Julianna Baggott

You're a hero here.'
'I don't want to be a hero.'
'What do you want?'
'I want to be a leader. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

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

Will you be my wife forever? Here and now and beyond all of this? — Julianna Baggott

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

I prefer true over happy now. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

If home isn't a place, what is it?'

'A feeling. — Julianna Baggott

Maybe they just didn't have anywhere they needed to go. — Julianna Baggott

For the first time in as long as he can remember, El Capitan is proud of his brother. Damn it, Helmud! Shit! You've been planning to kill me! — Julianna Baggott

But this kind of love can't survive. Love's a luxury. — Julianna Baggott

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

Our love is our burden. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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

The box we stored God i kept getting smaller ... until only a speck of god still exists, maybe only an atom.
Maybe an atom is all we need. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

Don't talk about dying? You want me to talk about love. They're one and the same, child. One and the same. — Julianna Baggott

But she's still afraid that the more she misses him
his face, his skin, the way he looked at her
and the more hope she has that she'll see him again, the more she has to lose. — Julianna Baggott

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

When boys grow into men, their boyishness is still apparent each time they abandon themselves a little. I stretch against them sometimes
lovesickness, it is the same ache as homesickness for me
and I marvel. The length of their bodies, it's where I find my house, my old street, Ashbury Park and all of its yowling
men, they walk around carrying my country, my motherland, and they don't even know. They don't have the tiniest idea. — Julianna Baggott

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

And I knew that I loved him with more than a nod. I loved him with a rush of tenderness, a lion's share. (Is that ever enough?)
I wanted to survive. I had to. I never called. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

The ugliness is what makes the beautiful things beautiful. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

Scars are good. Right, Helmud? It's the body's way of making armour. — Julianna Baggott

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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. — Julianna Baggott

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

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

The dirt," he says, his voice strangely peaceful. "What about it?" she asks. "It's dirty. — Julianna Baggott

Finally she said, "When I grow up, I'm going to live out here. I'll probably be a Miss Somebody, too ... "
Don't grow up," I told her. "It only gets more confusing. — Julianna Baggott

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

She feels a great pang of loss, an unexpected welling of sorrow mixed with confusion. — Julianna Baggott