I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers. Karen Russell More Quotes by Karen Russell More Quotes From Karen Russell The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it. Karen Russell middle ends feels 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 hard secret kids 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 everyday reality fiction It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation. Karen Russell realist red long 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 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 light reading book 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 kind kingdoms weather Much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. To oppose them, to suggest that one category excludes the other, always feels bogus to me. The great Leonard Michaels line is "I wanted proximity to darkness, strangeness"? That's what I'd say I want from a book, regardless of where it falls on the fantastical spectrum - that suspense connected to a particular human character, rather than just some mechanized plot. Karen Russell character book fall It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams. Karen Russell kind special dream If you're short on time, that would be the two-word version of our story: we fell. Karen Russell would-be stories two 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 perfection self writing I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus. Karen Russell focus writing moving You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories. Karen Russell realizing mortals stories 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 talking reality past 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 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 bird thinking I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures. Karen Russell encounters real want 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 glasses reading dream I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway. Karen Russell pay might country My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida. Karen Russell backyards florida madness
