Caroline Leavitt

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.

People love stories. They need stories.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

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.

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.

Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.

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

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.

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals.

The dead can't change, but you can.

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass.