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

Julianna Baggott

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Julianna Baggott
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: September 30
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Wilmington
Delaware
Writer
Becoming
College
Also
Good
Haunted
Catholicism
Catholic

More quotes by Julianna Baggott

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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.
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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.
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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.
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My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.
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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
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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
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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.
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Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.
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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
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Memories are like water.
Julianna Baggott
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I'm about to start something new. I'm waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.
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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
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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
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Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.
Julianna Baggott
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I have faith in human beings. I struggle with that faith.
Julianna Baggott
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I prefer a cluttered workspace.
Julianna Baggott
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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
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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.
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Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.
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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