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

  44 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

  10 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

  3 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.

  3 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

  13 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

  4 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

  6 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.

  3 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

  13 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

  3 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

  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

  6 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

  6 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.

  3 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

  3 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

  3 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.

  3 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

  3 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.

  3 Copy quote

• A vampire is a flexible metaphor. You know, death, sex, change, stagnation, loss of self, loss of agency, having to keep one's real self secret, the possibility of something lasting forever: love, hate, grief.

  Kelly Link

  Sex, Hate, Real

  3 Copy quote

• Nobody tells her to shut up. It would be pointless. Amy has a large heart and an even larger mouth. When it rains, Amy rescues worms off the sidewalk. When you get tired of having a secret, you tell Amy. Understand: Amy isn't that much stupider than anyone else in the story. It's just that she thinks out loud.

  Kelly Link

  Rain, Tired, Heart

  Kelly Link (2009). “Pretty Monsters”, p.85, Canongate Books

  3 Copy quote

• There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There's the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren't much of anything. They didn't carry musical instruments and they didn't care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.)

  Kelly Link

  Makeup, Hair, People

  9 Copy quote

• You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren't quite ready to give up on him yet.

  Kelly Link

  Giving Up, Home, Heart

  Kelly Link (2010). “Stranger Things Happen”, p.116, ReadHowYouWant.com

  3 Copy quote

• Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.

  Kelly Link

  Hurt, Reading, Play

  Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson (2005). “Magic for Beginners”, p.18, Small Beer Press

  9 Copy quote

• Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you.

  Kelly Link

  Moving, Enough, Faster

  Aliette de Bodard, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Caroline M. Yoachim, Catherynne M. Valente, Isabel Yap (2016). “Uncanny Magazine Issue 11: July/August 2016”, p.78, Uncanny Magazine

  3 Copy quote

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