Karen Russell Quotes

Quotes about:

• The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

  Karen Russell

  Ends, Middle, Feels

  48 Copy quote

• Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

  Karen Russell

  Reality, Everyday, Fiction

  "The Exchange: Karen Russell on 'Swamplandia!'". Interview with Rachel Hurn, www.newyorker.com. February 15, 2011.

  26 Copy quote

• When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

  Karen Russell

  Kids, Secret, Hard

  38 Copy quote

• Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.

  Karen Russell

  Wall, Party, Heart

  FaceBook post by Karen Russell from Aug 08, 2013

  24 Copy quote

• It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

  Karen Russell

  Dream, Special, Kind

  18 Copy quote

• My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

  Karen Russell

  Weather, Kingdoms, Kind

  23 Copy quote

• I do think there's something when you have an unbroken day, and it feels like you and your attention can just be together like birds again and you can actually think and dream a little.

  Karen Russell

  Dream, Thinking, Bird

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• A single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity. It went on and on, until my own lungs were burning. “What bird are you calling?” I asked finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. The Bird Man stopped whistling. He grinned, so that I could see all his pebbly teeth. “You.

  Karen Russell

  Lonely, Fall, Men

  11 Copy quote

• Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn't have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn't be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library's peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light.

  Karen Russell

  Book, Reading, Light

  FaceBook post by Karen Russell from Dec 02, 2012

  20 Copy quote

• Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

  Karen Russell

  Stories, Figures

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever someone asks me about fantasy versus realism, I'm like, "I don't know, guys. Did we not all just descend into some underworld, watch strangers from our past kaleidoscope through us according to some pattern that is both illogical and has its own strange melting truth, and then wake up and have a Pop-Tart?" Why are we talking about fantasy and reality like they're opposed?

  Karen Russell

  Reality, Past, Talking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

• Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

  Karen Russell

  Writing, Self, Perfection

  15 Copy quote

• Mythology is a really beautiful vocabulary passed down through centuries that helps us understand the perennial parts of our nature.

  Karen Russell

  Beautiful, Vocabulary, Helping

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

  Karen Russell

  Stories, Realizing, Mortals

  "Vampires in the Lemon Grove". Book by Karen Russell, February 12, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

• I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

  Karen Russell

  Real, Encounters, Want

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Given the brevity of our time here, it does seem likely that our species, too, must have at best a blinkered understanding of the shape of things, the import of certain events and what distinguishes "good" from "bad" luck.

  Karen Russell

  Understanding, Luck, Events

  "What Author Karen Russell Knows For Sure About 7 P.M." by Karen Russell, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 19, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

• Somehow I wasn't adding up right anymore. My parts weren't summing into myself.

  Karen Russell

  4 Copy quote

• What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials.

  Karen Russell

  News, Diapers, Morbid

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.

  Karen Russell

  Way, Myth, Valuable

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes, when you're writing sentence by sentence, you're not really sure what footprints you're going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.

  Karen Russell

  Fall, Writing, Might

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

  Karen Russell

  Dream, Reading, Glasses

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

• There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

  Karen Russell

  Swim, Extinction, Certain

  "Haunting Olivia" by Karen Russell, www.newyorker.com. June 13, 2005.

  10 Copy quote

• The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.

  Karen Russell

  Kids, Rays, Debt

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

  Karen Russell

  Tragedy, Bats, Caves

  FaceBook post by Karen Russell from Sep 01, 2014

  7 Copy quote

• I came to hate the complainers, with their dry and crumbly lipsticks and their wrinkled rage and their stupid, flaccid, old-people sun hats with brims the breadth of Saturn's rings.

  Karen Russell

  Hate, Stupid, People

  9 Copy quote

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