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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

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Julianna Baggott
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: September 30
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Wilmington
Delaware
Fear
Divide
Character
Divides
Play
Internals
Trying
Internal
Plot
Forces
Force
Lives

More quotes by Julianna Baggott

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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
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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
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I don't have a favorite. I need different genres at different times.
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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.
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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 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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I prefer true over happy now.
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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No matter what losses happen in a given season, the Red Sox always have next year.
Julianna Baggott
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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
Julianna Baggott
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She let him go once. Every day demands that she release him over and over again.
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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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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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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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.
Julianna Baggott
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I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.
Julianna Baggott
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I'm a writer of faith. I was raised Catholic, and I have a deeply Catholic imagination.
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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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