A biography for J. Courtney Sullivanhasn’t been written yet.
“I sometimes read on the subway, but I'm a hopeless eavesdropper and get easily distracted by strangers' conversations.”
“In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a shape, to turn them into a story.”
“I love the smell of a man's skin.”
“And anyway, once you allowed yourself to picture such a scenario, it couldn't happen. That was just the way life went.”
“On Saturdays, I get up early, spread out my notes from the week on the kitchen table, and create stories from them.”
“The moment a woman was born determined so much of who she was allowed to become.”
“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 still think of myself as a Bostonian.”
“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of making a woman's life everyone else's business--you have to dig out a little place that's only yours.”
“Deep down, I have always been 72 years old. In college, my friends used to make fun of me because I would sometimes skip a Friday night party to stay in my dorm room watching Turner Classic Movies.”
“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.”
“For whatever reason, various outlets and individuals are committed to making the world think that young girls don't talk or care about feminism anymore, that it's totally over. But it's not.”
“Someone could save your life without you ever knowing it. It happened more than most people realized.”
“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.”
“I like dressing up for dates and dissecting a dinner conversation with a new guy to determine if he might be The One.”
“I've rejected certain books, then gone back later and loved them.”
“She had learned over time that to know anything was bearable. It was secrecy that could not be borne.”
“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?'”
“I know a lot of women who embody what it means to be a feminist but do not want to use that word. The misperceptions about what it's all about have gotten into their heads.”
“I'm from outside of Boston, and in Boston, people are so passionate about their Irishness.”