By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

I’ve always known that there’s more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn’t regret that he isn’t more fully understood?

People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.

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