Top 33 Caroline Leavitt Quotes

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.

My first husband was a serial cheater.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?’

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.

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 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!

People love stories. They need stories.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.’

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.