Caroline Leavitt Quotes

I'm a big believer in quantum physics, which says that the universe is more incredible and mysterious than any of us can imagine, which is my way of saying, 'Anything is possible, including angels.'

- Caroline Leavitt

I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.

- Caroline Leavitt

Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.

- Caroline Leavitt

My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic.

- Caroline Leavitt

Indie bookstores love writers as much as they love readers, and there is something about a community store, where you walk in, you feel known, and the delight in books is just infectious.

- Caroline Leavitt

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass.

- Caroline Leavitt

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.

- Caroline Leavitt

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

- Caroline Leavitt

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

- Caroline Leavitt

I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it.

- Caroline Leavitt

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.

- Caroline Leavitt

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

- Caroline Leavitt

If a kid disappears, now there's Amber Alerts: they know this-this-this. In the '50s, we kids wandered around. Nobody knew what you were doing.

- Caroline Leavitt

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

- Caroline Leavitt

People love stories. They need stories.

- Caroline Leavitt

My first husband was a serial cheater.

- Caroline Leavitt

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.

- Caroline Leavitt

A title means marketing. It means that company's coming soon, and you'd better get out the Christmas lights so they don't miss your house.

- Caroline Leavitt

I am totally and completely addicted to movies. Jeff, my husband and I, watch movies every night and go out to the movies constantly.

- Caroline Leavitt

Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.

- Caroline Leavitt

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.

- Caroline Leavitt

I tell myself that some names can be mistakes, like Mxyplyzyk, a store in New York that lost customers because few could spell its name to look up the address. I tell myself that lots of writers agonize over titles, and often get them wrong at first.

- Caroline Leavitt

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.

- Caroline Leavitt

I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'

- Caroline Leavitt

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.

- Caroline Leavitt

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

- Caroline Leavitt

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad.

- Caroline Leavitt

All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.

- Caroline Leavitt

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

- Caroline Leavitt

I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast.

- Caroline Leavitt

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals.

- Caroline Leavitt

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.

- Caroline Leavitt

I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.

- Caroline Leavitt

Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.

- Caroline Leavitt

I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!

- Caroline Leavitt

Oh, I've had terrible, terrible relationships! The fact that I ever got happily married to a great, normal man is kind of a miracle.

- Caroline Leavitt

A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.

- Caroline Leavitt

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.

- Caroline Leavitt