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" 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
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Son
Business
Dreams
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books. "
Julia Glass
Books
Survival
Selling
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Sometimes the writing leads to the revelations, not the other way around. "
Julia Glass
Other
Writing
Way
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Julia Glass
Matters
Go
Best
" Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write. "
Julia Glass
Own
You
Wrong
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" At its best, fiction cultivates fantasy and compassion; at its worst, memoir provokes schadenfreude and prurience. The ugly truth, I fear, is that many people are drawn to sensational memoirs for the same reason they watch 'The Apprentice': they like to witness actual suffering, before-your-very-eyes humiliation. "
Julia Glass
Truth
Fear
Compassion
" I am not opposed to e-readers. Any technology that encourages the reading of literature is a good thing. "
Julia Glass
Reading
Good
Am
" 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'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
" Visual art is a foreign language I'm fluent at, but my native language is language. "
Julia Glass
Visual
Native
Language
" 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
" 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
" 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
" That's why you can't be a true Yankee without winter: because all the best pleasures are earned - the fire, the fried oysters; the warmer seasons, too. Who knows the real worth of summer at the beach without a good taste of the seaside in winter? "
Julia Glass
Beach
Winter
Seasons
" Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation. "
Julia Glass
Avoid
People
Me