Explore Quotes by Caroline Leavitt

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

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

People love stories. They need stories.

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

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.

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.

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.

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!

The dead can't change, but you can.

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.