I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.

People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.

... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.