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" 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
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" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Mother
Day
Better
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Sports
Your
You
" Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do. "
Julia Glass
Proud
Sister
College
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Me
Imagination
Writing
" Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation. "
Julia Glass
Avoid
People
Me
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Friends
Writing
Early
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Sweet
Love
Great
" 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
" 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
" I continue to shun, in a very curmudgeonly fashion, things like Twitter and Facebook. "
Julia Glass
Fashion
Things
Facebook
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Challenge
View
Me
" 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 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. "
Julia Glass
Sister
Animals
Home
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Art
Reality
Creation
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Language
Know
Heart
" Though I'm a New Englander, I'm very indoorsy once the mercury drops. "
Julia Glass
Very
Drops
New
" Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write. "
Julia Glass
Own
You
Wrong
" 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
" Sometimes the writing leads to the revelations, not the other way around. "
Julia Glass
Other
Writing
Way
" 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