Julianna Baggott Quotes

“Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?”

— Julianna Baggott

“Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Our love is our burden.”

— Julianna Baggott

“I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?”

— Julianna Baggott

“For the first time in as long as he can remember, El Capitan is proud of his brother. Damn it, Helmud! Shit! You've been planning to kill me!”

— Julianna Baggott

“The world is frenzied-giving and taking.”

— Julianna Baggott

But there it is: Everyone is alone, for life, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

— Julianna Baggott

“But she's still afraid that the more she misses him
his face, his skin, the way he looked at her
and the more hope she has that she'll see him again, the more she has to lose.”

— Julianna Baggott

“How do you know me?" she says.
He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says.
"You were what?" she asks.
"I was," he says again. "And now I'm not.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Now I feel like we weren't made for each other. We're making each other
into the people we should become.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Revolutions are usually started by people who are hungry. Sure, there are ideological revolutions, but, again, people rise up because they feel that the alternative is no longer livable. They have to be desperate.”

— Julianna Baggott

“The bombs disrupted molecular structures. The cocktails included the distribution of nanotechnology to help to speed up the recovery of the earth - nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules. The nanotechnology, speed up by DNA, which is an informational material but also excellent at the self-assembly of cells, made our fusing stronger. And the nanotechnology that hit the humans trapped in rubble or scorched land helped them to regenerate.”

— Julianna Baggott

I always doubt people ... I've survived by not believing in other human beings.

— Julianna Baggott

I'd always wanted to know what it was like. Happiness.

— Julianna Baggott

“Father can be the person you most hate and most fear, yes, but deep down you expect that he'll be the one to save you.”

— Julianna Baggott

“She feels a great pang of loss, an unexpected welling of sorrow mixed with confusion.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days.”

— Julianna Baggott

“She feels sick. She hates this world.”

— Julianna Baggott

“The truth that writers secretly harbor is that all books are failures. We try to do something that can't be done. Words. Is that all we rely on? Smudgy ink marks on a page? Pallid wisps and blotches? Text as scaffolding trying to hold up worlds? Actually, no, it's not all we rely on. What's worse is our reliance on the reader. A writer is forever locked in an interdependent relationship. It's like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river-our flimsy words and their frail, overreaching imaginations. The bridge will never meet in the middle. It's not possible. Sometimes you haven't even decided on the same river. The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis missed in the middle by a matter of inches the first time around. They tried again and made it. Writers know we never will.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Will you be my wife forever? Here and now and beyond all of this?”

— Julianna Baggott

“I didn't know it until the end. All stories worth telling are love stories.”

— Julianna Baggott

“When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual”

— Julianna Baggott

“Are you saying that the people here aren't desperate? I think you're wrong. I think they are and they just don't know it.
Oh, they're desperate, all right, but so desperate that they're clinging to what they have.”

— Julianna Baggott

“When I first met you, I thought we were made for each other even though we seemed like opposites in some ways and we fought. But now ... "
"What?"
"Now I feel like we weren't made for each other. We're making each other-into the people we should become. Do you know what I mean?”

— Julianna Baggott

“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

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

“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

“A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.”

— Julianna Baggott

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

— Julianna Baggott

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

“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

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

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

“Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Each genre has something to teach me about the others. Not all the lessons are transferable, but many of the most important ones are.”

— Julianna Baggott

“My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.”

— Julianna Baggott

“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

“You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make.”

— Julianna Baggott

“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

“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

Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.

— Julianna Baggott

“The fact is there are many women who nod politely, even agree openly within their male-dominated often highly educated cultures, but vote their own minds.”

— Julianna Baggott

“Women are constantly underestimated in our power, our reach, our collective pull.”

— Julianna Baggott

“I want to keep looking at ways to stride forward with positivity.”

— Julianna Baggott

“I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.”

— Julianna Baggott

“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

“Some of the best work done to combat the Republicans has been wit and humor.”

— Julianna Baggott