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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

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Julianna Baggott
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: September 30
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Wilmington
Delaware
Taught
Piece
Half
Lessons
Bulky
Beautiful
Essence
Npr
Also
Losing
Swollen
Might
Cutting
Reveal
Without
Novel
Apply
Writing
Pieces
Prose
Work
Learned
Journalism

More quotes by 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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Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.
Julianna Baggott
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Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.
Julianna Baggott
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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
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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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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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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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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?
Julianna Baggott
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My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.
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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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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I prefer true over happy now.
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.
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.
Julianna Baggott
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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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I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?
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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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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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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I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.
Julianna Baggott