Julia Glass Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“Though I'm a New Englander, I'm very indoorsy once the mercury drops.”

“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.”

“As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.”

“Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation.”

“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.”

“To me, stretching the capabilities of my imagination is a crucial aspect of writing fiction; you could think of it as a mental form of athleticism.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”