Words matter. These are the best Julia Glass Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
From fifth grade on, I worked at our public library. The pay, a pittance, was almost superfluous. All through high school, I looked forward to summer as the time when I could work at the library four or five days a week. I was never a camp counselor, a lifeguard, a scooper of ice cream.
The old adage is, ‘Write what you know.’ But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, ‘Write what you want to know.’
I was ridiculed in public school for being smart. A teacher’s pet.
In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters’ lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams… all arrive unbidden when I’m getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.
Finally, in my early 30s, I started writing fiction for the first time as an adult. That felt so scary, and I spent a few years feeling miserably ‘behind’ my high-achieving friends. But I persevered and obviously have no regrets.
I do gravitate toward 19th century writers, and I never mind being compared with some of the most memorable writers from that era. I mean, George Eliot is my absolute heroine.
I continue to shun, in a very curmudgeonly fashion, things like Twitter and Facebook.
I write because I’m in love with language; because I like working for myself, inside my head; and because it’s the only way I know to make a stab at answering the never-ending questions of the heart that arise simply from the everyday living of our lives.
I don’t see how you can write well if you’re not reading well at the same time. I think the only risk is reading too many books of one ‘type’ in a row.
My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I’d gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor.
A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, ‘Look at the world around you; learn from the people in these pages, neither quite me nor quite you, how life is lived in so many different ways.’
As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.
The best booksellers are like trustworthy pushers: Whatever they’re dealing, you take it.
My readers often tell me that what they admire about my books is my ability to write from so many points of view. My challenge to myself is whether I’ll ever be able to write a novel just from one point of view. It seems impossible.
There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.
Over time, it’s occurred to me that my protagonists all originate in some aspect of myself that I find myself questioning or feeling uncomfortable about.
If I’m lucky enough to see the day when my sons are living independently, maybe with families of their own, I’ll still be wondering how I can be a better mother and worrying about the things I overlooked back when they lived under my roof.
Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books.
My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of ‘War and Peace’ – and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she’s a midwife rather than a surgeon.
When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer’s heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I’m reading ‘really happened.’
I talked late, swam late, did not learn to ride a bike until college – and might never have walked or learned to drive a car if my parents hadn’t overruled my lack of motivation and virtually forced me to embrace both forms of transportation. I suspect I was happy to sit in a corner with a book.
All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.
I love to eat, I love to feed people, and I’m a great cook. I joked with my friends that I wanted to write a book where desserts had to be extensively researched, since I have a terrible sweet tooth. My particular downfall is cake.
A fine memoir is to a fine novel as a well-wrought blanket is to a fancifully embroidered patchwork quilt. The memoir, a logical creation, dissects and dignifies reality. Fiction, wholly extravagant, magnifies it and gives it moral shape. Fiction has no practical purpose. Fiction, after all, is art.
Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation.
I love it when I start a book that is so good that all I want to do is get back to my own writing, in a competitive way.
Winter sports aren’t my thing. You can have your boards and blades and your glacier-gripping cleats: My feet prefer to negotiate the ground on a pair of dependable soles.
I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet.
My love of books – not just of their tactile pleasures but of their astonishing variety – was born in a book-filled house; my father is a scholar.
Chemotherapy can be a long, tough haul – for me, it went on for six months – and the best doctors and nurses become, if only for that period of time, as essential in your life as friends or spouses.
