Karen Russell

New York is a weird place.

— Karen Russell

“the gravity of wound to fist”

— Karen Russell

I'm anxious by nature, I think.

— Karen Russell

“What a weird future awaited her in the past!”

— Karen Russell

“Our mother performed in starlight.”

— Karen Russell

“As dizzy as the stars, as near and alone.”

— Karen Russell

“She’s dead. She’s dead.”

— Karen Russell

The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things.

— Karen Russell

I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers.

— Karen Russell

“That summer Nal was fourteen and looking for excuses to have extreme feelings about himself.”

— Karen Russell

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

— Karen Russell

I tended to be drawn to the weirder, darker stuff. Horror and sci-fi anthologies.

— Karen Russell

If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird.

— Karen Russell

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

— Karen Russell

“i haf the sownd of more words butt i coud not remember the shaps of the letters.”

— Karen Russell

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

— Karen Russell

“The body can be a marvel of resiliency, a cactus when it comes to sleep - capable of surviving on mere drops.”

— Karen Russell

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

In short stories there's more permission to be elliptical. You can have image-logic, or it's almost like a poem in that you…

— Karen Russell

I love weird or funny or beautiful sentences; Joy Williams could write a microwave-oven manual and I'm sure I'd love it, because…

— Karen Russell

“I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.”

— Karen Russell

For me, the term "literary fiction" means there's always attention paid to language, and linguistic experimentation, sophistication.

— Karen Russell

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

— Karen Russell

“...a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a…

— Karen Russell

“But her favorite is the Houdini fantasy. Big Red disagrees with his biographers, who say that he was driven by his longing…

— Karen Russell

“He feels flattered by the attention. Most people look anywhere but his lower body. They pretend not to notice when he limps…

— Karen Russell

“I think something more mysterious might be happening, less articulate than any of the captioned and numeraled drawings in the 'The Spiritist's…

— Karen Russell

“I wanted to go to him then? Not all of me but the same part he'd just hurt. I don't understand this…

— Karen Russell

In workshopping short stories I learned how to get character down, and how to work with ratios of literal to fantastic to…

— Karen Russell

“I had an ear for languages, and I could read before I could adequately wash myself. I probably could have vied with…

— Karen Russell

“The Beginning of the End can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it. When I was a…

— Karen Russell

“There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real…

— Karen Russell

Much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary…

— Karen Russell

“She was right. The purebred girls were making mistakes on purpose, in order to give us an advantage. 'King me,' I growled,…

— Karen Russell

“Some team! The Chief was doing so many jobs alone. I’d fix on the Chief’s raw, rope-burned palms or all the gray…

— Karen Russell

“There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that…

— Karen Russell

“But in fact I was like Ossie, in this one regard: I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a…

— Karen Russell

“Grammar can erect a false wall. Look at how I keep falling into this trap, writing this piece. To refer to the…

— Karen Russell

Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn’t have to…

— Karen Russell

“But if it turns out that she really can adjust them from without? Reshuffle the deck of his past, leave a few…

— Karen Russell