Quotes by Julia Glass - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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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 / Novelist
Teacher
Book
Credit
Extraordinary
Guidance
School
Best Good Great
Teachers
Bridge
Cross
Good Teachers
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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 / Novelist
Overlooked
Roof
Better Mother
Independently
Sons
Wondering
Worrying
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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 / Novelist
Beach
Good Taste
Oysters
Seasons
Summer
Taste
Winter
Best Good Fire
Earned
Fried
Warmer
Yankee
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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 / Novelist
Arise
Everyday
Never Ending
Love Myself Heart
Answering
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I love meeting booksellers and readers and hearing how they've read and received my stories. Often I'm surprised by which characters they've loved best, what scenes have stayed with them, what connections they've felt between my characters' lives and theirs.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Character
Meetings
Scene
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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 / Novelist
Different Ways
Flying
Lifts
Pages
Life Good Experience
Life Experience Good
Neither
Sensation
So Many Different Ways
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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 / Novelist
Wedding
Atm
Cash
Closing
Obstacles
Singing
Son
Spinning
Stories
Twists
Walking
Arrive
Camp
Characters
Hymn
Least
Secrets
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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 / Novelist
Communicate
Decades
Lovely
Old Fashioned
Resistance
Theme
Transportation
Ella
Fitzgerald
Struggled
Mostly
Sung
Theme Song
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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 / Novelist
Brilliant
Cutting
Midwife
War Peace Always
War Peace Me
Delusions
Draft
Editor
Gently
Surgeon
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Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens - but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Citizens
Nonchalance
Soul
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Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Long
Play
Years
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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 / Novelist
Counselor
Cream
Fifth
Ice
Ice Cream
Lifeguard
Public Library
Summer
Time Work Never
Camp
Work Time School
Grade
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Writing fiction is a resolutely solitary pastime, and I love being with people, so the public side of being an author is, to me, the reward for all the private time invested. And I love teaching to a fault; I have a hard time not giving away a lot of my own writing energy to my students.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Love Is
Teaching
Writing
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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 / Novelist
Commitment
Important Questions
Heads
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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 / Novelist
Bike
Embrace
Transportation
Car Me Parents
Forms
Corner
Forced
Ride
Suspect
Talked
Virtually
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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 / Novelist
Julia
Sense Of Humor
Art Form
Dr
Gladly
Savor
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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 / Novelist
Blanket
Creation
Extravagant
Fine
Logical
Memoir
Moral
Novel
Purpose
Reality
After
Gives
Practical
Quilt
Shape
Wholly
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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 / Novelist
Apprentice
Compassion
Fantasy
Humiliation
Memoir
Sensational
Witness
Actual
Cultivate
Drawn
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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 / Novelist
Colorful
Conscious
Etiquette
Garments
Outfits
Pajamas
Silk
Velvet
Yards
Frequently
Jump
Occasion
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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 / Novelist
Happy
Sister
College
Inspiration
Mother
Novel
Proud
Tardiness
Two
Ages
Quite
Arrive
Same
Saw
Off
Later
Milestones
Plan
Published
Sons
Though
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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 / Novelist
Compare
Cosmos
Notes
Love Best Home
Authors
Literary
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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 / Novelist
Filled
Point Of View
Sibling
Significant
Truth Is
Male
Fathers
Focusing
Mothers
Novels
Readers
Spouses
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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. Without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in The Whole World Over, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley -- by far the best 'animal book' I've ever read.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Book
Dog
Horse
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Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.
Julia Glass / Novelist
Believe
Cutting
Errors
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