It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“The Beginning of the End can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it. When I was a… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“Even as a young man, Sawtooth had a hard time talking to women. Since moving to Out-to-Sea, he's become tight-lipped as an… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“The Avalanche," peacemaker Rachel recites, "is very important . It's a privilege to sing it. It's a celebration of our past." Everybody… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
Given the brevity of our time here, it does seem likely that our species, too, must have at best a blinkered understanding… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
“But if it turns out that she really can adjust them from without? Reshuffle the deck of his past, leave a few… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
I'd love to meet Flannery O'Connor. I think I'd be content to hear her speak on any subject. What forces shaped her.… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
If you're short on time, that would be the two-word version of our story: we fell. — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
A single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce… — Karen Russell Copy Share Image
The very best moment of writing 'Swamplandia!' was when I figured out what the ending should be. And even though I changed… — 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
“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
“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
“But things can be over in horizontal time and just beginning in your body, I’m learning. Sometimes the memory of that summer… — 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
