I prefer a cluttered workspace.

- Julianna Baggott

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

- Julianna Baggott

The truth is that for those 86 long years when the Red Sox went without a World Series win, fans were not only in a recession, but trapped in a longstanding, deeply entrenched sports depression.

- Julianna Baggott

Our imaginations are strong as children. Sometimes they get shoved aside, these imaginations. They get dusty and mildewed with age. The imagination is a muscle that has to be put to use or it shrivels.

- Julianna Baggott

I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.

- Julianna Baggott

I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven't learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.

- Julianna Baggott

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

- Julianna Baggott

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

- Julianna Baggott

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

- Julianna Baggott

Writers aren't born properly labeled so it is hard to know one when one appears.

- Julianna Baggott

While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.

- Julianna Baggott

The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.'

- Julianna Baggott

I'm a woman, but I've been a sexist, too.

- Julianna Baggott

I write across genres so I see them, more often, as complementary instead of separated by boundaries.

- Julianna Baggott

Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

- Julianna Baggott

I am deeply Catholic and always will be, but I'm no longer a member of the church. I left in 2003 because of the sex abuse scandal.

- Julianna Baggott

Don't shame the young for releasing their pent-up fear.

- Julianna Baggott

Basically if you burst into my office the walls themselves will flutter as if alive - maybe that's the reason for all the wings in 'Pure.'

- Julianna Baggott

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

- Julianna Baggott

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

- Julianna Baggott