Kelly Link Quotes

Quotes about:

• You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.

  Kelly Link

  Life, Firsts, Buried

  Kelly Link (2009). “Pretty Monsters”, p.7, Canongate Books

  45 Copy quote

• You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.

  Kelly Link

  Mistake, People, Narrative

  11 Copy quote

• What I like about narrative in general is when there is some incongruity between the form and content. Let's say, mixing up the gothic with a coming-of-age narrative. Telling a love story that's also a monster story. Mixing up superhero tropes with your monster tropes. I like category confusion.

  Kelly Link

  Confusion, Superhero, Age

  4 Copy quote

• Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness.

  Kelly Link

  Writing, Childhood, Normal

  Interview with Maggie Slater, www.apex-magazine.com. July 2, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl.

  Kelly Link

  Girl, Reading, Stories

  Kelly Link (2008). “Pretty Monsters”, p.229, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• Most of My Friends are two-thirds water

  Kelly Link

  Two, Water, Thirds

  Kelly Link (2010). “Stranger Things Happen”, p.239, ReadHowYouWant.com

  7 Copy quote

• Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.

  Kelly Link

  Life, Goodbye, Series

  Kelly Link (2001). “Stranger Things Happen: Stories”, p.143, Small Beer Press

  5 Copy quote

• Look. All books are weird when you think about it.... It goes without saying that real life is also weird.

  Kelly Link

  Real, Book, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet.

  Kelly Link

  Feet, Maps, Sometimes

  Kelly Link (2010). “Stranger Things Happen”, p.114, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

• So yes, this is a show about an adolescent girl, her friends, and various vampires. Vampires writing in diaries, vampires attending high school, vampires investigating various mysterious supernatural events, vampires tormenting each other, vampires eavesdropping on each other, and vampires being sarcastic about other vampires' hairstyles. Vampires embracing every possible opportunity to take off their shirts.

  Kelly Link

  Girl, Sarcastic, School

  14 Copy quote

• I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch.

  Kelly Link

  Jobs, Cutting, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me.

  Kelly Link

  Writing, Balance, Unlikely

  Interview with Maggie Slater, www.apex-magazine.com. July 2, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends.

  Kelly Link

  Wizards, Ends, Knows

  Kelly Link (2009). “Pretty Monsters”, p.34, Canongate Books

  14 Copy quote

• I think that we want to be led slightly astray when we're being told a story. Just a little wrong footed.

  Kelly Link

  Thinking, Stories, Want

  "INTERVIEW: Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble". Interview with Jason Diamond, electricliterature.com. February 6, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

• The Customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an a**hole. That's the first rule of retail.

  Kelly Link

  Retail, Firsts, Sometimes

  4 Copy quote

• I'd be flattered if someone said that my work is "too weird" for them. I value the uncompliment.

  Kelly Link

  Said, Flattered, Ifs

  "An Interview with Kelly Link: 'All Books Are Weird'". Weird Fiction Review Interview, weirdfictionreview.com. November 2, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• In terms of style, too, I think I've been working with a somewhat limited -- although intentionally limited -- set of tools. So I'm attempting to be a bit looser as I start stories off. To digress. To make interesting mistakes.

  Kelly Link

  Mistake, Thinking, Interesting

  4 Copy quote

• I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work.

  Kelly Link

  Coffee, Past, House

  4 Copy quote

• Most of the things that I remember from childhood wouldn't make a particularly good story: rescuing worms during rainstorms, our schnauzer attacking a wheel of cheese when someone dropped it during dinner, my parents tricking us into riding Space Mountain at Disney World (we thought it was an educational people-mover kind of ride), playing Star Wars (I got to marry Harrison Ford and my sister married Luke Skywalker) in first and second grade. On the other hand, we always had lots of interesting babysitters--seminary students and friends of my parents--who told really good ghost stories.

  Kelly Link

  Stars, War, Educational

  Interview with Lynne Jamneck, strangehorizons.com. February 28, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.

  Kelly Link

  Writing, Fiction, Occupation

  "Kelly Link, Words by Flashlight". Interview with Lauren McLaughlin, www.sensesfive.com. June 7, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I don't abandon stories once I've started working on them. Once I sit down and start a story, I'll be damned if I'm going to give up on it. But I do reject most of the ideas for stories that I come up with.

  Kelly Link

  Giving Up, Ideas, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Well, I don't ever leave out details, in that I don't come up with information or description which I don't then use. I only ever come up with what seems to me absolutely essential to make the story work. I'm not usually an overwriter. As I revise, it's usually a matter of adding in as much vivid details as seem necessary to make the story come clear without slowing down the momentum of the story.

  Kelly Link

  Essentials, Details, Momentum

  Interview with Maggie Slater, www.apex-magazine.com. Juy 2, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.

  Kelly Link

  Grateful, Eye, Perspective

  4 Copy quote

• The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

  Kelly Link

  Editors, Panic, Sparks

  "Kelly Link, Words by Flashlight". Interview with Lauren McLaughlin, www.sensesfive.com. June 7, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of my wives was my gunner. I came back here, after many adventures, and once, when I'd been drinking, donated the funeral carpet to the national museum. When I was sober again, I asked for it back, but they claimed not to know what I was talking about.

  Kelly Link

  Husband, Drinking, Adventure

  Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson (2005). “Magic for Beginners”, p.62, Small Beer Press

  4 Copy quote

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