Quotes from Caroline Leavitt

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

I am totally and completely addicted to movies. Jeff, my husband and I, watch movies every night and go out to the movies constantly.

I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it.

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.

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.

I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'

The dead can't change, but you can.

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.

Oh, I've had terrible, terrible relationships! The fact that I ever got happily married to a great, normal man is kind of a miracle.

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

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad.

I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.

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.

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

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've always had a clear sense that time is short and we need to live as fully as we can in every moment.

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.

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

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic.

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.

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

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.