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Karen Russell

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“My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself. ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams.”

IfsWorldWayTryingMeanDreamPastMy OwnSleepBrainWonderBearsSorrowHealthySceneFingersForgottenTinyHolesGrassProphetDreamerBubblesWetPeersBladesCurlsSinkholes
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“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.”

KnowsWayFeelsWritingKindMovingLinesPleasureLevelsSecretFictionFocusCapableWoodsMoving ForwardRoughBuilderCathedralsCaterpillarsRough Drafts
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“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?”

KnowsRealityPastGuyAsksTalkingWatchesFantasyStrangeWake UpPatternsStrangerPopsAsk MeRealismOur PastVersusMeltingIllogicalUnderworldKaleidoscopeTartsFantasy And Reality
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“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.”

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“Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons."”

IfsTwoWarBigsKidsRememberNamesLostVoiceDealsBoysMillionsDoubtCryBrotherDadGardenDiedNeighborGravesStealingLikesFishingGrandmotherFuneralSurvivedNinetyBig DealChildbirthPigeonsBulbsYour GrandmotherOliviaRadishesBrother Died
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“My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather. One such melting occurs in summer rain, at midnight, during the vine-green breathing time right before sleep. You have to ask the right question, throw the right rope bridge, to get there-and then bolt across the chasm between you, before your bridge collapses.”

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