Jill McCorkle Quotes

I think that marriage vows should include an escape clause that says the contract is broken if one party ups and makes a big switch in religion or politics or aesthetic taste. I mean, these shifts just aren’t fair, and we need an easier way out.

It’s one of the most basic laws of human nature, isn’t it? The more we are denied something, the more we want it. The more silence given to this or that topic, the more power.

Steve Yarbrough is a masterful storyteller-one of our finest-and Safe from the Neighbors is a masterpiece. . . . This is a spellbinding, powerful novel.

The silver friend knows your present and the gold friend knows all of your past dirt and glories. Once in a blue moon there is someone who knows it all, someone who knows and accepts you unconditionally, someone who is there for life.

I was with my dad 20 years ago as he was dying. I was there at the moment of his death, and I kept wondering the whole while what it must feel like from his point of view to still be there thinking, hearing all that was going on as people came and went, and life continued all around him.

By limiting or denying freedom of speech and expression, we take away a lot of potential. We take away thoughts and ideas before they even have the opportunity to hatch. We build a world around negatives – you can’t say, think, or do this or that.

Building a dollhouse is a lot like writing a novel because you are God of the Universe.

One day, when my son was eight, he came into the kitchen while I was cooking and said: ‘You put bad words in your books, don’t you?’ No doubt he had overheard my mother, who often tells people who ask about my work: ‘Well, you’ll never find her books in the Christian bookstore.’

My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it’s more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.

Humor – I see it as a survival skill.

I am very interested in that fine line between fiction and reality and between comedy and tragedy – and pushing the line as much as possible.

I like to think I put some of myself in every character.

I thought that we were all like trees, flexible youths, saplings, who grow up heavy and stiff, spread seeds and get chopped down and turned into notebook paper.

I think too many people edit themselves way too soon. There’s plenty of time to edit, and it is a crucial part of it all, too.

The first draft is all about freedom, and if loyalty is in question, it is only my loyalty to the characters and situations on the page. All the worries about where the material may have sprung from or what so-and-so might think can be dealt with later.

There is a choice to make, a chance to take.

Sometimes I do feel like I write the same story again and again. And for me, I am always looking for a place with a kind of redemption.

You will never be as smart as your subconscious.