Caroline Leavitt Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

People love stories. They need stories.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?’

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

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.’

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

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

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

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.