Latest Karen Russell Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. To oppose them, to suggest that one category excludes the other, always feels bogus to me. The great Leonard Michaels line is "I wanted proximity to darkness, strangeness"? That's what I'd say I want from a book, regardless of where it falls on the fantastical spectrum - that suspense connected to a particular human character, rather than just some mechanized plot.

  Karen Russell

  Fall, Book, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Whenever someone asks me about fantasy versus realism, I'm like, "I don't know, guys. Did we not all just descend into some underworld, watch strangers from our past kaleidoscope through us according to some pattern that is both illogical and has its own strange melting truth, and then wake up and have a Pop-Tart?" Why are we talking about fantasy and reality like they're opposed?

  Karen Russell

  Reality, Past, Talking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Karen Russell

  Beautiful, Vocabulary, Helping

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.

  Karen Russell

  Way, Myth, Valuable

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.

  Karen Russell

  Motivation, Real, Dark

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• In a way, I think we all want to look to that journalistic voice as a kind of global omniscience, a big eye to correct for our own limited purview: "Here's a realistic accounting of the world in which we live."

  Karen Russell

  Eye, Thinking, Voice

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials.

  Karen Russell

  News, Diapers, Morbid

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Sometimes, when you're writing sentence by sentence, you're not really sure what footprints you're going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.

  Karen Russell

  Fall, Writing, Might

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It's funny to think about the uncanny reflexively, as an author who is perhaps gradually becoming aware of my own hidden secrets. Accessing that shadowy territory really requires the physical act of writing.

  Karen Russell

  Writing, Thinking, Secret

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Karen Russell

  Training, Outsiders, Felt

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality.

  Karen Russell

  Character, Reality, Drafting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.

  Karen Russell

  Thinking, Views, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Growing up, Catholic church really was such an incubator for my imagination, because all of those mysteries felt embedded in this insanely green, tropical landscape: the ocean nearby, the giant banyan trees. It all felt part of one seamless mystery to me.

  Karen Russell

  Growing Up, Ocean, Imagination

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm probably a lot closer than perhaps the contents of my early fiction suggest to a jaded Denny's waitress with smoker's-lung-black humor than a ghost hunter.

  Karen Russell

  Black, Hunters, Fiction

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.

  Karen Russell

  Book, Thinking, Decision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation.

  Karen Russell

  Long, Red, Realist

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

  Karen Russell

  Real, Encounters, Want

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  Karen Russell

  Mean, Attention, Fiction

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.

  Karen Russell

  Florida, Backyards, Madness

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

• I do think there's something when you have an unbroken day, and it feels like you and your attention can just be together like birds again and you can actually think and dream a little.

  Karen Russell

  Dream, Thinking, Bird

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

• 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. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

  Karen Russell

  Dream, Reading, Glasses

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

• I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.

  Karen Russell

  Moving, Writing, Focus

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

• The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.

  Karen Russell

  Kids, Rays, Debt

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.

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

  Karen Russell

  One Thing, Ifs

  "Karen Russell’s Fantastical World". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. February 7, 2013.