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" As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real. "
Julia Glass
Only
Writer
Real
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" I read reviews and consider myself pretty 'plugged in' to the literary cosmos, yet one of the things I love best about book-touring is the opportunity to compare notes with favorite booksellers around the country. I always come home with books by authors I'd never heard of - or books I've read about but didn't realize I might love. "
Julia Glass
Love
Best
Home
" 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.' "
Julia Glass
Flying
Experience
People
" 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.' "
Julia Glass
Myself
Heart
Soul
" Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance. "
Julia Glass
Best
School
Help
" In my fairly disorganized life, yellow stickies are too easily lost, and as for software, I try to avoid using my computer as much more than a typewriter and a post office. I rely on my lifelong habit of daydreaming to spin my stories. "
Julia Glass
Try
Yellow
Office
" 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. "
Julia Glass
She
Start
War
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Story
Commitment
Yourself
" I'm a fictional monogamist - I can only work on one thing at a time - but each novel starts growing in my head when I'm about midway through the previous novel. "
Julia Glass
Work
Time
I Can
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Some
Never
Most
" Colorful garments - ball gowns, kimonos, evening pajamas - made from yards upon yards of iridescent silk or velvet. I own an unjustifiable number of such outfits and jump at the chance to wear them. Against the etiquette about which I am otherwise all too conscious, I frequently, and unrepentantly, overdress for the occasion. "
Julia Glass
Own
Jump
Evening
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Life
Best
Tough
" I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about... the world I live in. "
Julia Glass
Crazy
Live
See
" 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. "
Julia Glass
You
Think
Time
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Humor
Passion
Live
" I continue to shun, in a very curmudgeonly fashion, things like Twitter and Facebook. "
Julia Glass
Fashion
Things
Facebook
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Library
School
Time
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Love
Writing
Start
" Though I'm a New Englander, I'm very indoorsy once the mercury drops. "
Julia Glass
Very
Drops
New
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Car
Ride
College
" The best booksellers are like trustworthy pushers: Whatever they're dealing, you take it. "
Julia Glass
Best
You
Whatever
" In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate. "
Julia Glass
Comfort Zone
Experience
Me
" I wonder if it's in the nature of fiction writers to never quite see their own lives as 'real,' since we are always making stuff up! "
Julia Glass
Own
Nature
Always
" Readers tell me that my novels are filled with significant mothers. Do I realize this? Do I do it on purpose? The truth is, I don't. I think of myself as a writer of family stories. I write more often than not from a male point of view, and I usually begin by focusing on siblings, spouses, even fathers, before I think about the mothers. "
Julia Glass
Myself
Truth Is
Truth
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Myself
Feeling
Uncomfortable
" Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books. "
Julia Glass
Books
Survival
Selling
" Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write. "
Julia Glass
Own
You
Wrong
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Father
Variety
Love
" I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great. "
Julia Glass
Writing
Great
Time
" I have struggled for decades now with the fear of and resistance to change - mostly in the realms of technology, transportation, and the ways people choose to communicate. If I had a theme song, it would be that lovely song 'I'm Old-Fashioned,' as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. "
Julia Glass
Change
Fear
Technology
" Visual art is a foreign language I'm fluent at, but my native language is language. "
Julia Glass
Visual
Native
Language