J. Courtney Sullivan Quotes

"For my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a plain, unfinished wooden dollhouse. It had six empty rooms, two floors, a staircase, and a door that swung out onto a little front stoop. The windows opened, and the roof retracted on one side, revealing an attic."

"I sometimes read on the subway, but I'm a hopeless eavesdropper and get easily distracted by strangers' conversations."

"I read 'Love in the Time of Cholera' when I was 19, and I still think about the characters."

"I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking."

"There's a Dar Williams song about 'houses that are haunted, with the kids who lie awake and think about other generations past who used to use that dripping sink.' I was one of those kids."

"When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet."

"I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats."

"Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga."

"I know a lot of women who embody what it means to be a feminist but do not want to use that word. The misperceptions about what it's all about have gotten into their heads."

"For whatever reason, various outlets and individuals are committed to making the world think that young girls don't talk or care about feminism anymore, that it's totally over. But it's not."

"A glimpse at my night stand gives the mostly true impression that I am a book hoarder."

"Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind."

"In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become."

"I love the smell of a man's skin."

"I like dressing up for dates and dissecting a dinner conversation with a new guy to determine if he might be The One."

"I love making lists."

"I've never understood why some people think it's virtuous and essential to finish every book they start."

"I've rejected certain books, then gone back later and loved them."

"My relationship with the 'Baby-Sitters Club' series bordered on addiction, and my mom got me heavily into the Trixie Belden mysteries as well. Trixie Belden was like Nancy Drew, but without the boyfriends and cute outfits, which I think is the reason my mother preferred her."

"I'm from outside of Boston, and in Boston, people are so passionate about their Irishness."

"Every St. Patrick's Day in my hometown is such a huge thing. You know, it was like Christmas, but in green."

"I call my mother every day for things: 'How long do you cook an egg for?' Or, 'Can you remind me of our dentist's phone number at home?'"

"On Saturdays, I get up early, spread out my notes from the week on the kitchen table, and create stories from them."

"I am intrigued by the way secrets move through a family and how events and perceptions from decades earlier continue to influence the way relatives view each other. Homes shape family histories as well."

"When I started writing my second novel, I decided that one of the characters would have a passion for dollhouses, which allowed me to do hours of guilt-free 'research' online and at the Manhattan Dollhouse boutique inside F. A. O. Schwarz."

"As a little girl, my dollhouse allowed me to imagine a big, perfect, grown-up life in which I'd be effortlessly domestic."

"It's true of Irish Catholic families. They're big on story telling and big on saving stories from one generation to the next."

"When you write fiction, you're like a bird making a nest. You remember every little story ever told you. It's funny how things come back to you."

"The first book I bought was 'Anne of Green Gables,' an edition that is beautiful and complete - one I hope to read with my son someday, seeing it anew through his eyes."

"In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a shape, to turn them into a story."