Caroline Leavitt Quotes

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.

Oh, I've had terrible, terrible relationships! The fact that I ever got happily married to a great, normal man is kind of a miracle.

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year.

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'

A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.

I've always had a clear sense that time is short and we need to live as fully as we can in every moment.

The way to get free of pain is to dive down into it. To acknowledge it.

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad.

I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals.

The dead can't change, but you can.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

I think the Internet has made things a lot easier. Twitter and Facebook let you really connect to your readers effortlessly!

My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic.

Never be with anyone you couldn't imagine yourself being able to live without.

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible.

I have to admit that many of the relationships I write about are destructive, but that's the yin to the yang of a good relationship. Maybe you have to experience the terrible ones to appreciate the good unions!

I think it's crucial to live, play and work passionately. I'm inspired by my husband, my son and the sense of possibility in the world.

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast.

Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.

Which is worse, she thinks, waiting for the sting, or the sting itself?

There have been years where I've had to take a real job and I wrote during slow times and lunches. I think never forgetting how lucky I am to be able to do something I love has really fueled me.

I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass.

People love stories. They need stories.

He tried to be a good man, to do the right things, to make the
world a little better than it had been before he had put his stamp
upon it. You could be generous with the love you gave, with the
care you took with others. You could follow all the command-
ments that made sense to you and still the world could sideswipe
you. There was no cause and effect. There was no karma. The
truth was that he wasn't so sure he understood how the world
worked anymore.

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.

Why doesn't he get over it already? But that was the secret, wasn't it? You never got over what you lost. You always carried it with you, stitched to you like Peter Pan's shadow. And you never wanted to get over it, because who wanted to forget a time that had been so important? No, the truth was, you wanted to remember it always.

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.