Julia Quinn, THE WIT AND WISDOM OF BRIDGERTON
Bestselling author of the Bridgerton series Julia Quinn joins Zibby to talk about her latest book, The Wit and Wisdom of Bridgerton: Lady Whistledown’s Official Guide, which features a collection of quotes and snippets about the show’s characters. Julia also shares how she almost gave up writing to attend medical school, the ways in which the popular Netflix adaptation of the books have impacted Julia’s own perception, and why she’s a huge advocate for treadmill desks. Julia also discusses the recent tragic loss of her father and sister due to a drunk driver and how she plans to honor them. Read more about the Steve Cotler Scholarship set up in her father’s name here.
Transcript:
Zibby Owens: Hi, Julia. Thank you so much for coming on “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books” to discuss The Wit and Wisdom of Bridgerton: Lady Whistledown’s Official Guide, your latest book. Congratulations.
Julia Quinn: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Zibby: Oh, my gosh, it’s my pleasure. Congratulations on the crazy success of Bridgerton and all your books and everything that you do. I am beyond impressed at how many best sellers. It’s just amazing. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to see now the show take off like this too. What is that like for you?
Julia: No, you probably can’t imagine it. It’s as crazy as you’re imagining. I expected the show to do well. I never thought it was going to bomb or anything like that. I don’t know how anybody could expect what ended up happening. It’s just bonkers. It’s just absolutely bonkers in the best-possible way.
Zibby: Wow. I wanted to talk about this book, but I want to understand how you even got here. You went to Harvard. You were going to be a doctor. You went to med school. Then what happened? Right? Is that the story?
Julia: That’s almost the story. I was at Harvard. Let’s see, where do I start? Between my junior and senior year at Harvard, I started writing a romance novel. It was what I liked to read for fun, and so I thought I’d write it. I was working for Let’s Go Europe, which is the travel guide they do at Harvard. The previous year, I had been one of their writers. They sent me off to Greece, which was really fun and interesting. I say that with some irony because I don’t speak Greek. When I said to them, “I don’t speak Greek,” they said, “That’s okay. We don’t have anybody who speaks Greek, so you’re as good as anyone else.” I was like, “Okay, great.”
Zibby: It’s all Greek to me.
Julia: Pretty much. I was hired to do the UK and Ireland book. Then they switched me off to Greece. Then the next year, I stayed back in Cambridge and I sold the advertising, which was actually really a fun time. I was living with my boyfriend who was working on an ambulance. I married him later. I wrote about four chapters of what actually ended up becoming my first novel. I said to myself, oh, I’m going to keep writing this when I’m in college. Of course, I didn’t because I just had too many other things to do. Then I had this big epiphany my senior year. I decided I wanted to be a doctor. I was taking this class in evolutionary biology, which was fabulous. I loved it. It reawakened this love of science in me. I was the classic girl of the eighties who got brainwashed that STEM was for boys. It was really, really sad because I had actually been — what’s the word? You’d think, for a writer, I would have better vocabulary recall. I’d been identified, actually, as one of the top female math and science students in the country in junior high and high school. I was like, oh, no, that’s not me, so I didn’t do any of that stuff. I had this reawakening love of science. I decided, I’m going to be a doctor. This came about in part because I knew how to apply to school.
I said, okay, I’m going to finish writing my novel. I was writing my novel. I was working part time in jobs that didn’t require too much brain power. I was taking my pre-med classes. I finished my book. I went out, I got an agent. I ended up selling the book the same month I got into medical school. That was kind of crazy. I ended up deferring because I thought, I just sold the book. It’s too exciting. I knew once you get going in medical school, that’s it. That’s your road for a really long time. I deferred. Then I deferred again. Meanwhile, my boyfriend went, so I’m living with a med student. Then I had what I call my mid-twenties crisis. All of a sudden, all my friends were going to graduate school. All I could think was, I’m not qualified to do anything if this writing thing doesn’t work out, which is ridiculous. I’d already had three books published, so I’m basically living the dream. Everybody wants to publish a book. Yet I’m freaking out because I haven’t been to graduate school. This is in August. I still can’t believe they did this, but I went back to the people at Yale, which was where I had gotten into med school and deferred. I begged them to take me back. Literally, with days to spare before the school year started, they took me back. What I did was I got on the longest highway with the shortest onramp. My onramp to med school was really short, but it went on forever. I went to med school for about two, two and half months before I realized it wasn’t the right thing. I withdrew. If I could sound very, very arch and whatever, I could say I’m a Harvard grad and Yale dropout. I’m not exactly sure what that means. I haven’t looked back. I tell people, I’m married to a doctor, so I know exactly what I’m missing. Boy, do I think I made the right choice.
Zibby: Wow. I could actually, by the way, say — I almost could’ve said the same thing except I went to Yale undergrad, and I almost dropped out of Harvard Business School. In fact, I went to the people. I was like, “I’m dropping out. I’m done. See you later.” They convinced me to stay, but I was out of there.
Julia: Wow, so we’re almost like these psychic twins. What’s interesting is when I went to the dean and went through my reasons for not wanting to stay, he actually said to me, “Every year this time, somebody comes to me like you. This is the very first time somebody’s come to me and laid out why they don’t think it’s right for them and I’ve thought, you’ve really thought this through. I think you’re right.” He didn’t try to convince me to stay. Here’s the best part. What a lovely man. He said, “I don’t think we need to charge you any tuition for your time here.”
Zibby: No way.
Julia: Yeah. They ended up never charging me.
Zibby: In fact, they just paid you to leave. They were like, you know what? If you could just get away from here, we’ll just hand you this money and the interest from it that we made.
Julia: That would be nice. That would be really nice. No, but they didn’t charge me. His name was Dean Gifford. I did put him in a book, just his name. Dean Gifford is in How to Marry a Marquis. You can see his name in there. That was my thanks. I remember, actually, when I was debating — Should I stay? Should I go? — looking in the Yale handbook very specifically at, wait a minute, at what point am I on the hook for an entire year’s tuition here? I was at this point, it was like, oh, if you’re going to go, you need to go now. If you wait to next week, it’s going to be another five thousand dollars or something. There is that. We’re still paying off my husband’s med school loans. Who knows how long it would’ve taken?
Zibby: Oh, my gosh. At least, I feel like anybody who comes to you guys, they’ll be fine.
Julia: Not because of me. I can help you out if you need a band aid or something. My husband is a — I do feel the need to point this out in this day and age. He is a board-certified medical doctor in the field of infectious diseases with about twenty years of practice. I do feel the need to say this fully because there seems to be such a disdain for people who have expertise in their field these days. I’m often quoting him saying, no, your internet search is not the same as my husband’s twenty-five, thirty years in this field of infectious disease. It’s been a very interesting time to be an infectious disease family.
Zibby: I bet. Wow, there must be a lot of stories there as well.
Julia: Oh, my goodness, yes.
Zibby: Another book, perhaps.
Julia: For him to write, I think. For him to write.
Zibby: I think it’s so interesting that despite writing three books, you were already feeling bad about yourself. Somehow, no matter how many books people write, there’s still some lingering thing. You should be doing something else. Is this enough? Will this go anywhere? When did you feel like you could stop that, or have you?
Julia: Oh, I stopped that, definitely.
Zibby: Okay, good. Phew, all right.
Julia: No, no. I don’t feel like my books are perfect, I’m the best writer there ever was, but I don’t have imposter syndrome anymore. I don’t think I ever really did have imposter syndrome with this. I always felt good about my writing. I always felt like I deserved to be published and all that stuff. I didn’t expect everybody to love it. I didn’t have unrealistic expectations, so I think maybe that helps. I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t about the writing. It was more just about what society told me I was supposed to be doing at that time in my life. You see what your peers are doing. I was living in New Haven where I think I was possibly one of the only twenty-something people who wasn’t a student. I’d go somewhere. Someone would be like, “Oh, what are you studying?” I’d be like, “Nothing. I have a job.” That’s what it is to be the spouse of a graduate student in a college town, really. Everybody is studying something except for you. It was just a weird time. It was kind of emotional upheaval. Then I came out of it. I feel pretty good about my choices.
Zibby: Good. Yeah, I think you’ve proven that this is a good field.
Julia: It worked for me.
Zibby: It worked for you. Why, after all the books, did you write — collect, I should say — The Wit and Wisdom of Bridgerton and collect all the quotes and make this beautiful guide which is gorgeous and very giftable and amazing? A to Z. I like this quote. “I simply refuse to deal with idiots. It has cut my social obligations in half.” Love that.
Julia: Wouldn’t that be nice for all of us? To be completely honest, it was suggested to me. We wouldn’t have this gorgeous collection if we didn’t have the television show and, suddenly, this big market for it. It just seemed like a nice idea. Suddenly, there were so many new readers and also people who watch the show
Zibby:
Julia: So you can relate to exactly how old it is. I think most writers don’t go back and reread their books very often. I don’t. For me, a big part of it is that the way that I write, I edit as I go along. I realize this is a podcast, but I’m actually making motions that show my editing process, these little loops. I’m constantly looping back. What happens is that by the end of it, I’ve read the book maybe a hundred times. I don’t want to read it again. I remember talking to somebody in publicity who was saying, “Julia, you need to stop saying this.” I’m like, “Oh, my god, it’s so predictable. I think it’s so boring.” They’re like, “Stop saying that about your book.”
A lot of these quotes, I have no recollection of writing that sentence. Then some of them were quite memorable to me. I did remember them very well. Sorry, I keep looking off at — I have the book here too. It was fun. The other thing that was very different about it was that — I am not a very visual writer. I don’t picture the scenes the way I think some people think I do. I don’t picture the characters very clearly. I describe them. This person has this color hair and he’s got that color eyes, but I don’t have a very sharp image of it. It’s different now that we’ve had the show. Now I’m rereading this stuff, and I see the actors. It’s a very different experience for me to actually have these clear images of what the characters look like. I think that’s a testament to the excellent acting and especially to the fabulous casting director. She did an amazing job. I think I say this in the intro. It doesn’t matter that — in the book, Simon had blue eyes. When I’m reading the Simon stuff, I see Regé-Jean Page, who was absolutely amazing. Then the woman who plays Eloise, Claudia Jessie, she puts an incredible physicality into the way she does that role. When she walks, her head’s a couple inches ahead of the rest of her like she just has to get where she’s going. I see these things. I see her movements as I’m reading her stuff. It was really a fascinating exercise for me in an almost intellectual sense as well.
Zibby: Wow. I loved how you said, yes, thank you to the show because now I actually have a picture of what they look like in my head. That’s great. This is somewhat off topic, but I saw on your website that you had started a foundation in honor of your father because of his loss a year ago. Can you tell me about that?
Julia: Yes. It was actually earlier this year. My father and my sister were killed in an automobile crash that was caused by a drunk driver and then also a truck that didn’t properly secure its load. Some, I’m told, canvas bags flew off the back of a truck. My father’s car and another car, I don’t know whether they stopped or just slowed down a lot, but they did. Then there was a man driving a very large pickup truck who was three times over the legal limit for alcohol. He told the police he’d been drinking for two days straight. Slammed into the back of my father’s car which then slammed into the car in front of it killing my father and my sister, critically, critically injuring my brother-in-law who’s still hospitalized — this was five months ago — and also badly injuring my stepmother, who can no longer live independently. This was obviously something pretty — I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s nothing I’ve ever gone through in my life. It’s easily the worst thing that ever happened in my life. Somebody described it as the year of loss and abundance. On the one hand, so many incredible things are happening in my life because of Bridgerton. Then on the other hand, I lost two people very close to me in the blink of an eye.
I’ve been trying to — well, you can’t make sense of it. I think making sense of it isn’t the right word, but I’ve been trying to find ways to heal. It’s tough because you’ve got two people. There’s two very separate things. I can think about my dad and think, yeah, my dad was perfectly healthy and he probably had another decade at least, but he’s seventy-seven. He was seventy-seven. I got to have my father for fifty-one years. The kids down the block, who are teenagers, lost their dad last year to pancreatic cancer. I’m very fortunate. That argument doesn’t work when your sister is thirty-seven. I’ve been finding different ways for each of them to mourn. For my sister, we had been working on a book together, a graphic novel which is coming out next year called Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. For her, I’ve been trying to honor her by making sure that that continues in the best-possible manner. It was almost done, so there’s stuff to do. Then with my dad, we created, not a foundation, but a scholarship in his name. We’re working towards the creation of a scholarship in his name at the Summer Science Program, which is a program — it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a summer science program. He had actually been a participant in 1960 in the second year of its existence. At the time, it was just for boys, of course. It was for the best science students in the state of California. He got to go. It just opened his eyes in a huge way. He came from what was then a very small town in California. It’s now actually a fairly large city.
Somebody there had suggested to him, “Why don’t you consider applying to Harvard?” Nobody in his high school had ever even left the state to go to college. It was a really big deal. It just opened his world. At the time, it was astrophysics. They actually had a computer they were working on. Later in, I think it was probably the early nineties, he realized that the program was floundering. Along with some other alums, he took it over and saved it. He worked on it, was on the board of directors for years. My family are establishing scholarships that will provide full financial aid for one student per year. Then we also insisted there had to be a Cotler Prize — his last name’s Cotler — for the student who, in the eyes of the faculty, shows the most exuberance and love of learning because my dad was nothing if not exuberant. He was really one of a kind. If anybody would like to contribute to this, if you go to my homepage on my website, which is juliaquinn.com, just scroll down to the bottom. There’s information on it. We are forming this scholarship to continue his love of education. That’s been something which has been very healing for me, to work on something positive within something of such loss.
Zibby: I am so sorry to hear that story. My heart breaks when I heard it. I loved that you have found a way to make meaning of it because there’s not much else you can do with loss aside from just get up every day and then try to find something to ground you in the chaos of it.
Julia: You know, you start to realize that so many of these sayings and aphorisms become that way for a reason. Everyone’s like, the only way out is through. It seems trite, but it’s trite because it’s true. You have to just get up each day. I tell people, I’m not in denial. I’m not in disbelief. I’m in the bewilderment stage of grief. I don’t know why nobody writes about the bewilderment stage of grief, but that’s what it is. It’s not any of the things that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said. I believe it, I just still don’t understand it. How did this happen? All of a sudden, you’re like, how does somebody die in an instant? I don’t know. It’s one of those things where I don’t even know what to say about it. It’s just heartbreaking, really.
Zibby: I had this moment. I lost my best friend on 9/11. I was going through all her stuff. She was my roommate in college and after college. I had this moment in her basement of her parents’ home as we were unpacking all the clothes that we had first packed up from her house. Then eventually, they asked me to go down and deal with all the clothes because they couldn’t go down there. I remember just sitting in the basement on my knees one day and pulling out this sweater. There was this one long strand of her hair. I was just like, how? How is this the only thing left? How? How can this be? I don’t understand. It’s too much for our brains. I don’t know. I totally understand bewilderment. It’s confusion and all of that. Anyway, I am so sorry for your loss.
Julia: Thank you. I’ve reached the point now where I can talk about it, obviously. I’m talking about it now, but it’s hard. Since I suddenly have this way to talk to so many people through you, I guess just to say to everybody who’s going through some kind of loss, be kind to yourself. I’m learning that your brain does what it needs to do to help you through your grief. For me, my brain seems to be sequencing the grief. Having lost two people at once, my brain’s working on grieving my father more than my sister. That will come. I refuse to feel guilty about the fact that my grieving is more focused on one of the two people right now. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love the other one. It just means that my brain is protecting me and saying, look, this is how you’re going to get through this without hurting more than you can handle.
Zibby: The brain does kick in. I have this trauma therapist I know well who’s writing a book for Zibby Books. She’s always citing all these statistics and saying, no, that is your brain’s defense. That is what happens. That is what happens in trauma. You will get through that. Her name’s Meghan Riordan Jarvis. She’s amazing. She’s taught me so much about what the brain actually does that I kind of wish I had known. They should teach that in school because the one thing everyone’s going to experience is loss. We’re not all going to need chemistry. I also took evolutionary biology. Found it fascinating, but it has not served me well, let me just say, in my day-to-day life. If I had taken a class on — not that there’s anything you could really learn because you have to go through it. Everybody is so unique in how they experience loss.
Julia: I think there’s a class now. I thought I read there’s a class at Yale now which is the most popular class on campus about something about happiness.
Zibby: There was some positive psychology stuff. I don’t know. Happiness, I’ll have to look it up.
Julia: Of course, I bring it up and can remember nothing more about it except that it was offered and everybody wanted to take it because it was just something about — this is the typical — I have a Jeopardy knowledge of everything. I could answer a question on Jeopardy but not go any deeper into anything. That’s pretty much my level of —
Zibby: — I saw you were some crazy winner on The Weakest Link. What was that? That’s crazy.
Julia: Oh, I was. I was. That was amazing. Okay, we’re getting back to happier things now. That was one of life’s most surreal and fabulous moments. Yes, I won on The Weakest Link.
Zibby: That’s so cool. That’s a fantasy, is being on one of those shows. You just nailed it. That’s amazing.
Julia: The funny thing is it helped me get my mortgage for my first house. Actually, no, my second house, the one I’m standing in right now. It was one of those things. I still can’t believe they lent us the money for it. Later they said to us, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, you guys were the worst. We use you as a teaching case now because you had everything. You had student loans. You had this self-employed writer. You had game show earnings.” They said they felt better about us knowing — the game show earnings were coming in a month after we closed on the house. They’re just like, “You’re using everything for the house. We felt better knowing that this money was coming in.” I have The Weakest Link to thank for my
Zibby: Wow. Oh, my gosh, what a life. Crazy. Getting back to the book world for a minute —
Julia: — Sorry.
Zibby: No, don’t say sorry. I find this super interesting. There’s nothing more interesting than talking and hearing somebody’s story. Just from a factual thing to close this up or whatever, aside from your graphic novel, which is amazing you’re doing, what’s on the book horizon?
Julia: I got to figure that out. I was telling you before we started that I just got back from Maui, which was wonderful. My husband had a conference there, and so I tagged along, which is great because my conferences are never in places like that. Mine are in Dallas in July. I’m not dissing Dallas. It’s just July. We were in Maui. I was like, I’m going to figure out everything about my next book. No. I have some ideas, but I’ve been taking an extended break. There’s been a lot of other stuff to do workwise because of Bridgerton. Then with the pandemic, I really wanted to focus a little bit more in supporting my family, especially since, as I mentioned, my husband is a doctor of infectious diseases. We have been hit by this pandemic pretty hard in our family, not through our sickness, but through the toll that this has taken on our health care frontline. He’s done, at this point, probably a hundred and fifty interviews. He’s very articulate. He’s a very good speaker. I think once the local news finds a doctor who can speak very well in front of a camera, they do not let go. In fact, he’s done so many news stories with this one reporter we love named Tammy Mutasa that when he did one for someone else, we’re like, you’re cheating on Tammy! This is not fair to Tammy. I spent a lot of time with that and with Bridgerton and then, of course, this terrible car crash in my family. I just really, honestly, haven’t been writing, but I need to get back into it.
Zibby: You don’t need to get back into it.
Julia: Well, you know, legally, I do. I have signed some contracts, but I am in a position where I can move at my own pace, which is nice.
Zibby: I think you should write some essays about the grief. I don’t know if you write essays or whatever. If you need a place, I have this Moms Don’t Have Time to Write column, but even just for you. I feel like you need to write about that stuff, get it out of your mind onto the page.
Julia: I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m not much of an essayist, actually. I did write a commencement speech this year. I gave the commencement address at my high school, which was crazy, which I guess is a little bit like writing essays. That was hard.
Zibby: What part of the world did you go to high school? In California?
Julia: No, I went to boarding school. This was back at my very rural, out-of-the-way boarding school in Connecticut. It was a wonderful experience to go back and speak. Somebody told me when I was there that they had just gone to a speech, and I did better than the governor. That was nice. They were like, you were way funnier than the governor.
Zibby: I’m not surprised. I think that’s great.
Julia: I beat the governor.
Zibby: My son is tucked away at the moment in a boarding school at Massachusetts, so I am familiar with that life. Even if not for publication, it might be helpful. I’m just throwing it out for things that have helped me in the past.
Julia: That’s possible.
Zibby: I’m sure you get tons of advice, but that’s my own advice. Last question, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Julia: Two things, really. One is, try to find some sort of organization that is relevant to your work because there are a lot of resources out there. I’m not necessarily the best person to ask about that because I sold my first book right at the dawn of the internet age, so I don’t even know how to find the stuff on the internet because I never had to. There are a lot of great writers’ groups, writers’ organizations. That can help. If your aim is to publish, that can really help you. These days, a lot of writers do self-publish. When I was starting out, we kind of poo-pooed that. It was really vanity publishing then. Nowadays, it’s a vibrant, incredible route. I know a lot of authors who self-publish who do amazingly well. They have a lot of control. They really like it. There are organizations and groups that can help you learn about that too. The other thing I tell people is that if you want to write a book, unfortunately, you have to actually write the book. There isn’t another way to do it. I always tell people if I could’ve figured out another way, trust me, I would’ve figured it out. You have to sit your butt in the chair. You have to write it. In my case, I’m at my standing desk here, which is actually a treadmill desk.
Zibby: Ooh.
Julia: Yes, I love this. I go between working at my treadmill desk and working at a Starbucks. Although, I can’t really work at the Starbucks right now. That’s why I’m not writing. I can’t go to my Starbucks.
Zibby: How long do you actually turn on the treadmill? I feel like I would just stand on it.
Julia: Oh, all the time.
Zibby: Yeah?
Julia: Oh, yeah. Also, because I do this thing — a little plug for something else. I do this thing called StepBet, which is this great app where you actually bet real money that you’re going to make your stepping goal every day. I got totally into it and was looking up the company and then realized the guy who runs it lived one room down from me my freshman year of college. You put like forty dollars down. It goes into this pool. Then you have to make these step goals every week. If you miss one week, you’re out. There’s no second chances. Then at the end of the six weeks, whatever’s left in the pool gets divided among the winners. I’m averaging twenty percent returns on money, which is great.
Zibby: I have never tried that. I am inspired to do so now.
Julia: You should. I think people think of treadmills like running. No, you’re not running. You’re just walking at a normal pace. You absolutely can do it. I did all this research on it. I tend to digress a lot, as I’m sure you’ve learned. There’s something called NEAT, which is non-exercise aerobic thermogenesis, which is basically the aerobic energy that your body produces or uses or whatever not through formal exercise, so not when you’re breathing hard and whatever. There have been a lot of studies that say that if you can up that, health benefits overall is incredible. Maybe not necessarily if you’re looking to lose weight or tone or whatever, but for your overall health benefits in life, to add to that, is just wonderful. I end up walking five, seven miles a day some days because I’m over here paying my bills. I’m walking. It’s terrific.
Zibby: Is there a specific model? I really think I might get this now. I sit at my desk all day. I’m so sedentary. I used to be so active.
Julia: This is great. I’m on a LifeSpan.
Zibby: All right, I’m writing it down.
Julia: A plug for my website, I believe this is in the FAQ of my website.
Zibby: Oh, is it? Okay, I’m sorry.
Julia: No, that’s okay.
Zibby: I’m so sorry. I did not get through the FAQ.
Julia: Please visit my website at juliaquinn.com.
Zibby: All right, I’m going to do it. Maybe that’ll be my New Year’s resolution. Anyway, I’ve kept you way longer than I should on this podcast. You’ve spent so much time with me today. I feel like I need to let you go back to your —
Julia: That is okay. I have drunk the Kool-Aid on the treadmill desk. I will talk about it for ages. I want you to get a treadmill desk now because I think it will — it won’t change your life, but it will make you much less sedentary.
Zibby: That would be great. Yeah, that’s a problem. I love solutions to problems that you can implement immediately.
Julia: Again, I forget I’m on a podcast. I feel like one of those captions saying, “Image: She makes thumbs up.”
Zibby:
Julia: Double thumbs up.
Zibby: Julia, thank you. This has been so great. I’ve had the best time.
Julia: Thank you. Me too.
Zibby: Thank you for sharing all that stuff. I’ll be thinking of you.
Julia: I feel like I have a new friend.
Zibby: Me too. I love it. Seattle is on my wish list of places to go because I’ve accumulated some new friends. One of my teammates works there. It’s on my wish list for the next year, so I’ll let you know if I ever come that way. If you’re in New York, let me know.
Julia: I am frequently at least near New York, so yes, I will let you know.
Zibby: Thank you. Have a great day.
Julia: You too.
Zibby: Bye.
Julia: Bye.
