I took a fiction-writing workshop my sophomore year at Northwestern, and I hadn't yet read Junot Diaz or George Saunders, Flannery O'Connor.… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu. — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
It can be difficult workshopping novels because any questions or qualms you have as the author can be like, 'That's next chapter,… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I think there's a kind of confidence I often feel when I'm writing that I don't feel when I'm in the world,… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I'm living two blocks away from this library - and I don't know why I was so elated about this - but… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I was sort of growing up at a time of really rapidly expanding ecological consciousness. It was a time of reckoning when… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
Writers get embarrassed sometimes in talking about how much fun writing can be, but drafting is often really enjoyable. Often, you're tumbling… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“As a kid I heard the word malignancy as "Malig-Nancy" like an evil woman's name, no matter how many times Kiwi and the Chief… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“Once Mom and Ossie and I spent an afternoon alone together in her hospital room. We were watching the small TV above her head… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
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.… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams. — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“She used to suffer these intense bouts of homesickness in her own bedroom. When she was very small, she would wake up tearing at… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“At ten, I couldn't articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well. (spoken… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“ Forever , just the word fills Beverly with an unaccountable, schoolmarmish sort of rage. Forever, that's got to be bad math, right? Such terrifying math.” — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.” — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it. — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.” — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
