Top 89 Quotes & Sayings by Julianna Baggott

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?

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

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

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

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

Being cross-genre, you can encounter an image and decide not only how to best express it but what form would express it best.

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

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.

I prefer true over happy now.

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

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?

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

Memories are like water.

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.

I wrote before I could write. I got my hands on a journal, maybe a hand-me-down; I had three older siblings. My first entries are in the handwriting of the sister closets in age (5 years my senior). She must have gotten tired of my dictations because she gave up and then my blocky scrawl shows up. I wrote plays as a kid mostly.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Our love is our burden.

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.

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.

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.