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" Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books. "
Julia Glass
Books
Survival
Selling
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" 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
" 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
" The best booksellers are like trustworthy pushers: Whatever they're dealing, you take it. "
Julia Glass
Best
You
Whatever
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" Sometimes the writing leads to the revelations, not the other way around. "
Julia Glass
Other
Writing
Way
" Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write. "
Julia Glass
Own
You
Wrong
" 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 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.' "
Julia Glass
Work
You
Old
" 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
" Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation. "
Julia Glass
Avoid
People
Me
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Visual art is a foreign language I'm fluent at, but my native language is language. "
Julia Glass
Visual
Native
Language
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark. "
Julia Glass
Weather
Leaving
Landscape