“On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as nature. The chapel was our favorite place. Long before we could understand what… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“She was still loping around on all fours, her fists blue-white from the strain. As if she were holding a secret tight… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“The baby turtles are turning away from the ocean. It's easy to see why. The black waves lap up the moonbeams, and… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“Granana lives on the other side of the island. She's eighty-four, I'm twelve, and Wallow's fourteen, so it's a little ambiguous as… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“He looks me to pieces … I realize now that I have been glimpsed and corner-of-the-eyed before, by the Chief and my… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“ INERTIA: Unless an object is acted on by friction from an outside force, it will spiral through space, in the same… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“In the beginning, fifty hours sounded like a bleak ocean of time, more hours than Sawtooth wanted to spend with himself, let… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“It's unclear whether Brauser was trying to hit Franz Josef or Rangi. I hope it was the former. There's one difference between… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“I just want to tell her that I'm sorry," Wallow says softly. He doesn't know that I'm awake. He's talking to himself,… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“It's go time.' He takes my elbow and gentles me down the planks with such tenderness that I am suddenly very afraid.… — 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
