Barbara Quick

I wouldn't trade my job as a novelist and poet for any other job in the world. Writing is a refuge for me--a secret garden, a doorway into other lives, an act that saves my life every single day.

One life has never seemed like enough to me (maybe because I'm a Gemini?). Once I gave up on the idea of acting on the stage, fiction presented itself to me as the next best way for me to experience many more lives than just my own.

With all the translations, especially of VIVALDI'S VIRGINS, my books have brought me into contact with wonderful people from all over the world I would never have met otherwise. I feel so grateful for the readers who have reached out to me over the years, to let me know that my work touched them in some way. That's the highest honor a writer can ever hope for!

Readers are so important to writers--and to literature itself! Buying books is an act of cultural affirmation. Literature--and writers--will perish without readers committed to buying, reading, and talking about books.