Quotes by Jennifer Mcmahon - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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I wrote my first short story in third grade.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Short Story
Grade
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Sometimes what a person needs most is to be forgiven.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Forgiveness
Needs
Persons
Sometimes
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If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Doe
Snow
Water
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All great heroes have a flaw. It's one of the things that makes them heroes.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Flaws
Great Hero
Hero
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Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
People Know Some People
Scares
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What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Magic
Special
What If
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Some things, I think, like fairy books and secret doors, are only meant to be found by children.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Doors
Fairy
Meant To Be
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I've never done a sequel - so far, there have been too many new stories and characters calling my name.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Sequel
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I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Love Best Hope
Readers
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I do believe in ghosts, or at least in some kind of persistent spiritual echoes of the past in certain places.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Echoes
Ghosts
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...they were exactly what the other needed; the missing piece that made everything else magically click into place.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Clicks
Missing
Pieces
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I have a pretty open mind about supernatural stuff - I do believe that there's more to this world than what meets the eye.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Open Mind
Meets
Supernatural
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Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Inviting
Stories
Storytelling
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My mother taught me to believe in ghosts: to use a Ouija board, have seances, and leave little offerings out for those who have passed.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Board
Ghosts
Passed
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I graduated with a B.A. from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Vermont
Graduated
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Ain't no point worrying about what's been or what's gonna be. You just gotta do your best right now. And trust everyone else is doing the same.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Be You
Right Now
Worry
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I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother's house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Connecticut
Ghost
Attic
Named
Suburban
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You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Beautifully
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People often ask if my books should be read in any particular order, but they're all standalone novels, so picking up any one of them would be fine.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Picking
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Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Great Deal
Images
Plotting
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My grandmother was a psychiatrist and possibly the ultimate of all skeptics. But even she couldn't explain the strange noises we so often heard in the attic.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Ultimate
Attic
Explain
Noises
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I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
More And More
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The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Kings
Baby
Beer
Crazy
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At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Changed
Conflict
Forever
Leaving
External
Internal
Shape
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My grandmother was a psychiatrist and had shelves full of medical books - I was constantly sneaking looks at some of those. I was fascinated by the descriptions of illnesses and diseases.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Fascinated
Shelves
Descriptions
Diseases
Illnesses
Sneaking
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I think we all have a kind of dark side, and that's what keeps life - and characters - interesting. That's one of the things that I'm drawn to write about again and again, the secrets we keep and how they shape us.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Dark Side
Drawn
Secrets
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One exercise I always do when I'm getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start with, 'I never told anybody...' and go from there, writing in the voice of your character.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Exercise
Paper
Character Me Voice
Character Always Your
Pen
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Honestly, I feel pretty awed anytime I meet just about any writer. I get how hard it is to write and make a living from it, but there's also this almost magical force you need to tap into, and I'm amazed by anyone who can do it.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Amazed
Anytime
Tap
Magical
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All my life, I had this idea that if I could unravel the mystery that was my mother, then I could help save her. But it didn't really work. We were close, but she struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, and it was rough at times.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
If I Could
Mental Illness
Rough
Life Work Mother
Life Work My Life
All My Life
Struggled
Unravel
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I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Avoiding
Feathers
Sticks
Woods
Ate
Wild
Dysfunctional
Grown-Ups
Practically
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Do me a favor - right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Desk
Favor
Guide
List
Obsessions
Pumping
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In all honesty, I didn't love reading when I was a kid. I'd rather be running around in the woods or doing my best to scare the pants off all the children in the neighborhood by pretending my house was haunted or making them play Bloody Mary in the bathroom.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Bathroom
Bloody
Honesty
Mary
Neighborhood
Pants
Scare
Woods
Love Best Children
Haunted
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Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Easter
Counselor
Delivery
Homeless
Illness
Mental Illness
Painter
Pizza
Shelter
Staff
Worker
Bunny
Farm
Full-Time
Member
Quit
Real Job
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Although in my life the level of loss has never reached the extremes it does in 'The Winter People,' I certainly can identify with being both a daughter longing for her mother and being a mother who is almost scared by the intensity of her love for her daughter.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Extremes
Intensity
Longing
Loss
Winter
Life Love My Life
Life Love People
Identify
Reached
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I absolutely love writing about the things that scare me, the things that keep me up at night. I don't quite know why. Perhaps because so many things do scare me, and this is my subconscious way of trying to exercise some control over things that go bump in the night!
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Scare
Subconscious
Bump
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I think of setting as almost a character of its own, influencing the other characters in ways they're not even aware of. So much of the success of a good ghost story rides on creating a creepy atmosphere; details of the landscape itself can help create a sense of dread.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Atmosphere
Creepy
Dread
Ghost
Landscape
Setting
Influencing
Rides
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I found many treasures in the woods over the years: shotgun shells, empty Colt 45 bottles, old railroad spikes, orange and black beetles eating a dead mouse, pebbles that looked just like teeth, old stone walls and cellar holes, a rusted out frying pan, the skull of a cat.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Bottles
Cat
Eating
Empty
Frying
Holes
Orange
Pebbles
Shells
Teeth
Woods
Cellar
Looked
Mouse
Pan
Railroad
Shotgun
Skull
Stone
Treasures
Walls
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I believed then - in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult - that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Easy
Easy Way
Eye
Impossible
Wind
Adult
Heart World Me
Believed
Deep
Followed
Forest
Lead
Magical
Meets
Raven
Spirits
Spoke
Toad
Trees
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I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Notebook
Wake Up
Always Heart Me
Calls
Queen
Pounding
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If there was a way to bring someone back, would you do it, no matter what the consequences might be? I know that for me, my logical mind says, 'Of course not!' But the truth is, when you lose someone who is so close to you, it's as if they are a part of you; there's always one more thing to say, one more moment you wish you'd had.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Logical
Truth Is
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I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.
Jennifer Mcmahon / Novelist
Baby
Lying
Skeletons
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