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" When you've lost a baby, everyone around you expects you to be fine once the new baby is born, as though that somehow takes away the pain of losing the first child. I needed to express how wrong that was. "

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" I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over. "

Elizabeth McCracken

Feel

Over

Better

" Some graphic narrative art presses against the panel: you wrestle with it at the level of the paper. "

" In 'Property,' none of the characters are based on any real people, but the house is very much the house that I moved into in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "

" The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers. "

Elizabeth McCracken

Writing

Without

" New Orleans is still the place where you find out that you have a doppelganger and feel lucky - but somehow unsurprised - to learn that his name is Mad Bottom. "

" Life likes jokes; life is constantly making jokes, even at the most inopportune moments. "

" I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all. "

Elizabeth McCracken

Forward

Feel

" The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar. "

" Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote. "

" There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor. "

" For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers. "

" I have children, and this notion - that there might be a single book that introduces children to literature - terrifies me. But you could do worse than Mary Norton's 'The Borrowers.' I loved it as a kid, and my kids love it, too. "

Elizabeth McCracken

Children

You

" You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.' "

" I have been the person who tries to keep conversation light while talking to someone whose heart has been smashed. "

" Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction. "

" I've always been absolutely appalling about the future, but I sort of think that was my childhood religion. We were future deniers. You did your best in the present, which was all around you. "

" In general, I think people are worried about saying the wrong thing to any grieving person. On a very basic level, I think they're frightened of touching off tears or sorrow, as though someone tearing up at the mention of unhappy news would be the mentioner's fault. "

" I can't imagine not joking even at the worst of times. And for me, it's sort of automatic. "

Elizabeth McCracken

Even

Sort

" Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it. "

" There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.' "

" My mother's family didn't speak much about Europe: My mother was born in 1935, and her new-world parents were the sort who didn't want to worry their children about the war. "

" An iron lung looks like an enormous metal coffin or a 19th-century rocket ship: only its occupant's head is left outside, a tight seal around the neck. "

" I'm astounded by people who can listen to music when they write. I can only assume that they have multi-track brains, while mine is decidedly single. "

" I am not a therapy person, but I understand what therapy does. It's a way of translating dark thoughts into something manageable. "

" I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line. "

" I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me. "

" When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer. "

" When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was. "

" I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country. "

" You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people. "