Karen Thompson Walker

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.

— Karen Thompson Walker

“Doesn't every previous era feel like fiction once it's gone?”

— Karen Thompson Walker

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

— Karen Thompson Walker

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

— Karen Thompson Walker

“Antidepressants were swimming in the rivers, and our bloodstreams were just as polluted as the waterways.”

— Karen Thompson Walker

“We were, on that day, no different from the ancients, terrified of our own big sky.”

— Karen Thompson Walker

“Maybe loneliness was imprinted in my genes, lying dormant for years but now coming into full bloom.”

— Karen Thompson Walker

“Of all the strange phenomena that befell us that year, maybe nothing surprised me more than the sound of that small question…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“From then on, we all had a little more time to decide what not to do. And who knows how fast a…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“It was a rough crossing, the one from childhood to the next life. And as with any other harsh journey, not everything…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily life, how she captures…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I…

— Karen Thompson Walker

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is…

— Karen Thompson Walker

Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I'm an only child, and I think one of the sweet things about that is that my parents are really interested in…

— Karen Thompson Walker

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in…

— Karen Thompson Walker

End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“I listened for a while to the reassuring sound of that boy breathing near me. I watched the slight movement of his…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“I like to think about how my parents' lives once shimmered in front of them, half hidden, like buried gold. Back then…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“Mais tarde, viria a pensar que esses primeiros dias foram a altura em que aprendemos como espécie que andávamos preocupados com as…

— Karen Thompson Walker

Shortly after the 2004 Indonesian earthquake, I read that the earthquake had affected the rotation of the earth, shortening the length of…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“They say that humans can read each other in a hundred subtle ways, that we can detect messages in the subtlest movements…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“I knew everything about the back of that head - the swirl of his hair, the curve of his ear, the straight,…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“It never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different — unimagined,…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I love conventional apocalypse movies. In movies, I like to be with the president, or the scientist trying to solve the problem,…

— Karen Thompson Walker

It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it…

— Karen Thompson Walker

Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the…

— Karen Thompson Walker

Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination ... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“For days afterward, a series of magical thoughts flew through my mind. For instance, it seemed somehow surprising that the hours continued…

— Karen Thompson Walker

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the…

— Karen Thompson Walker

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize…

— Karen Thompson Walker

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an…

— Karen Thompson Walker

“I liked the idea, how the past could be preserved, fossilized, in the stars. I wanted to think that somewhere on the…

— Karen Thompson Walker