Jennifer Chiaverini Quotes

He nodded, rueful. I immediately caught myself

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

In my contemporary stories, I write about today's quilters, inventive techniques they use, and how technology has influenced their art. Novels set in the past let me have fun researching patterns that were popular and fabrics and tools available to quilters through history.

Anna, falling in love with you was like coming home to a place I didn't realize I'd been missing all my life. You're the only person I've ever known who accepts me for who I am, right in this moment, faults and all, and isn't waiting for me to become someone else.

One can never have too many librarian friends.

When I was working on my first novel, 'The Quilter's Apprentice,' I knew I wanted to write about friendship, especially women's friendship and how women use friendship to sustain themselves and nurture each other.

I wanted to write about women and their work, and about valuing the work we, as women, choose to do. Too many women I knew disparaged their work. Many working mothers thought they ought to be home with their children instead, so they carried around too much guilt to enjoy much job satisfaction.

Over the years, I've traveled to many places for inspiration and research, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii.

The moment a gentleman perfects an invention and petitions the government for aid, he ceases to be an innocent citizen and becomes a culprit, a man to be shirked, browbeaten, and sneered at. I have never heard of any mechanician, inventor, or natural scientist who failed to find the government all but inaccessible, and whom the government did not discourage and treat badly.

... a family was an act of creation, the piecing together of disparate fragments into one cloth -- often harmonious, occasionally clashing and discordant, but sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and strong. Without contrast, there was no pattern... and each piece... would endure if sewn fast to the others with strong seams -- bonds of love and loyalty, traditions and faith.

Marvelously entertaining, Gabrielle Donnellys The Little Women Letters evokes the spirit of Louisa May Alcotts Little Women with warmth and affection. I thoroughly enjoyed every word of this wonderful book.

Mary Lincoln provided Elizabeth Keckley with opportunities for social and economic advancement she probably had never imagined during her years as a slave, while Elizabeth offered Mary the loyal, steadfast friendship she craved but had always found so elusive.

And of course you believed their wise counsel," said Elizabeth lightly, "because people who have never met me are always the best judge of my character.

Ignorant people, whispering cruel rumors, her mother whispered. Pay them no mind.

Who said you had to fill his shoes?" said Karen. "Wear your own shoes. They're bound to fit better. Walk your own path your own way and you'll be more likely to get to where you need to be".

Then it occurred to her (Elizabeth Keckley) that if Tad (Lincoln's son) had been a colored boy rather than the son of a president, and a teacher had found him so difficult to instruct, he would have been ridiculed as a dunce and held up as evidence of the inferiority of the entire race. Tad was bright; Elizabeth knew that well, and she was sure that with proper instruction and hard work, a glimmer of his father's genius would show in him too. But Elizabeth knew many black boys Tad's age who could read and write beautifully, and yet the myth of inferiority persisted. The unfairness of the assumptions stung. If a white child appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent. It seemed to Elizabeth that if one race should not judged by a single example, then neither should any other.

Hope is never false. One's hopes may not be fulfilled, but that doesn't not mean it was wrong to hope

Anyone who works on a quilt, who devotes her time, energy, creativity, and passion to that art, learns to value the work of her hands. And as any quilter will tell you, a quilter's quilting friends are some of the dearest, most generous, and most supportive people she knows.

Beginning writers are often advised to 'write what you know,' and since I knew about quilters - their quirks, their inside jokes, their disputes and their generosity, their quarrels and their kindnesses - the lives of quilters became a natural subject for me. Quilting wove together my two themes as completely and effortlessly as I could have hoped.

Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie.

Two quilters who have just met will be strangers only until their mutual passion for quilting is revealed. Then they can talk for hours like the best of friends.