Quotes from J. Courtney Sullivan

A high percentage of each of my books has been written in Des Moines.

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

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.

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

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

The hardest part about writing fiction is finding long stretches of time to do it: for me, this means writing mostly on Saturdays and Sundays. But I am always thinking about my characters, jotting down ideas in stolen moments and hoping I'll be able to make sense of them when the weekend rolls around.

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.

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

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.

I knew that my dollhouse was a toy, but in a way, it seemed more like a portal to adulthood. I didn't play with it the way I might with my Barbie dream house. Instead, I furnished it. I kept it pristine. I decorated the house for each season. I had jack-o'-lanterns in the fall and a Christmas tree with working lights in the winter.

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.

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

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

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

One of the best parts of being a writer is getting to peer into other worlds - even if you aren't going to stay very long.

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.

She thought about him all the time - not so much about Doug the individual, but rather about the nature of love, and the shock of learning how quickly it could disappear.

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?'

Early on in the writing process, there is sometimes this temptation to write around the central drama instead of just aiming for the bull's-eye. The bullseye is harder to hit, of course, but it's so much more satisfying when you do.

I love the smell of a mans skin.