Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do.

Julia Glass

Categorized in : Me Happy Mother Sister

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.

Julia Glass

yarn destiny life

Now is almost always the better choice. You never know about later.

Julia Glass

choices knows

Never talk yourself out of knowing you're in love or into thinking that you are.

Julia Glass

knowing thinking

Knowing and understanding the people we love most is a process that continues well beyond their deaths... and is never complete.

Julia Glass

understanding people

And then there's the personal question so many of Lassie's fans want to ask: Is he allowed on the furniture? Of course he is-but, then, he's the one who paid for it.

Julia Glass

personal-question training dog

Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note.

Julia Glass

play long years

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in.

Julia Glass

crazy writing world

I love meeting booksellers and readers and hearing how they've read and received my stories. Often I'm surprised by which characters they've loved best, what scenes have stayed with them, what connections they've felt between my characters' lives and theirs.

Julia Glass

meetings scene character

I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.

Julia Glass

disappointed expectations

Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.

Julia Glass

matter mind

When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.

Julia Glass

poodles dog people

Writing fiction is a resolutely solitary pastime, and I love being with people, so the public side of being an author is, to me, the reward for all the private time invested. And I love teaching to a fault; I have a hard time not giving away a lot of my own writing energy to my students.

Julia Glass

teaching writing love-is

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

Julia Glass

teacher book school

Of all the virtues, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.

Julia Glass

guessing sometimes people

It's odd to spend your vacation with someone else's music especially when you're alone. You're free to let loose, unobserved, but someone else has chosen the words you belt out in private, the rythms you can dance to like a fool.

Julia Glass

vacation fool odd

My publisher is generous with deadlines, which are never set in stone. Some writers need that pressure, but I am more productive when there's less panic.

Julia Glass

generous productive deadline

But things change, of course, and so do the ways in which people see themselves.

Julia Glass

things-change people way

Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens - but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.

Julia Glass

nonchalance citizens soul

I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet. Without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in The Whole World Over, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley -- by far the best 'animal book' I've ever read.

Julia Glass

horse dog book

I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.

Julia Glass

nurse rain joy