263 Quotes by Meg Wolitzer

But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.

We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.

I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don't want that to happen to me.

For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling.

To commit to actual things composed of wood and metal and fabric was to make real the vagueness and unreality of love.

Everything you do, it’ll all feel really slow for a long time. But looking back, much later, it will have seemed like it was fast.