Caroline Leavitt Quotes

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

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

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

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible.

My first husband was a serial cheater.

Never be with anyone you couldn't imagine yourself being able to live without.

People love stories. They need stories.

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

I write about the things that haunt or obsess me.

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year.

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

I just love that feeling of being in another world, of creating characters and watching where they go.

I am an indifferent cook but I can make pie.

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

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. Its like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

I think the Internet has made things a lot easier. Twitter and Facebook let you really connect to your readers effortlessly!

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 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 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.

E-readers are changing the way we read, and the author is now required to get out there and be a kind of showman, an unlikely role for introspective people used to working in their pajamas!

I think it's crucial to live, play and work passionately. I'm inspired by my husband, my son and the sense of possibility in the world.

When you love what you do, it stops seeming like work and instead becomes necessity.

There have been years where I've had to take a real job and I wrote during slow times and lunches. I think never forgetting how lucky I am to be able to do something I love has really fueled me.

I think my stubbornness has served me well. I just knew at an early age what I wanted to do and I was determined to be able to make it happen, no matter how long it took.

I have to admit that many of the relationships I write about are destructive, but that's the yin to the yang of a good relationship. Maybe you have to experience the terrible ones to appreciate the good unions!