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

Julianna Baggott

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Julianna Baggott
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: September 30
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Wilmington
Delaware
Lying
Use
Stories
Writing
Good
Habit

More quotes by Julianna Baggott

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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
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A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.
Julianna Baggott
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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.
Julianna Baggott
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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?
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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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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
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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
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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
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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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Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?
Julianna Baggott
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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
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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.
Julianna Baggott
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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
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The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.
Julianna Baggott
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Love is selfless, it is a weakness, a giving in, a constant falling.
Julianna Baggott
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You learn to exploit genre for the more important things - to my mind - like story, character, image, language.
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.
Julianna Baggott
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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.
Julianna Baggott
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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
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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.
Julianna Baggott