Author Quotes

Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill.

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.

The best thing that can happen to people entering creative professions is the dwindling of all other possibilities.

Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this writing job.

It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.

I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent ones. I went home to a very traditional, good Irish Catholic family.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.

I sort of play golf because a lot of my friends are into it, but I'm awful - my handicap is about six or seven thousand.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.

There is too little courtship in the world.

The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading.

My audience knows me, and I wear beautiful clothes as a badge of honor. They remember where I came from.

Lack of sleep makes me less productive. I need a good seven or eight hours a night.

It's really easy to figure out why I love what I love, the holidays and food. I know the difference between having them and not having them.

Instead of doing cinnamon, nutmeg, and all those baking spices I'll have one spice that's for sweets, and that's pumpkin pie spice.

If you've attended the Cordon Bleu, you would know that no woman is supposed to be a chef - only men.

I'm the only girl on The Food Network who grills - I have two bestselling grilling books. I try to really focus on what men and women can do outside together out on the grill. I think it's really fun to have men and women out there together, having fun, working and enjoying themselves.

I'm not sure that some of the food purists are in touch with what really goes on in American households.

I'm an activist for gay marriage equality and children's rights. I'm the face of Share Our Strength.

I think women today are so overwhelmed and overtaxed.

I like to create what I call 'tablescapes.' It's so much more fun when you organize your table around a theme, don't you think?

I like doing food as a focal point on my table. It is not like going out and buying flowers or candles, which are expensive.