Karen Russell Biography

“There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Family Sisters Fathers 198 199

“There is a loneliness that must be particular to monsters, I think, the feeling that each is the only child of a species.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Loneliness Monsters

Book:Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories

Source: Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories

“March 1. DEAR BABY: I like the way you turn in half circles on the mattress, like a senile clock.”

Babies

Book:Orange World and Other Stories

Source: Orange World and Other Stories

“We've been working out of our tin can for half a decade. Nobody suggests moving into a brick-and-mortar office; nobody wants to peer through glass windows, in a building with a foundation, and admit that the insomnia emergency is now a permanent condition.”

Denial Epidemic

Book:Sleep Donation

Source: Sleep Donation

“At ten, I couldn't articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well. (spoken by narrator Ava Bigtree in Swamplandia!)”

Historian Mourn Swamplandia

Author:Karen Russell

“People talk about heredity as if it’s linear and vertical. Dead people pass things “down” to the young.”

Genetic Memory

Book:Orange World and Other Stories

Source: Orange World and Other Stories

“Far away, I can hear Mouflon, our last sheep, bleating in the dark. I wonder if Annie is still out to protect her, still scouring the woods in barefoot pursuit of those dogs. I feel sorry for Annie, alone with a rabid pack of her own delusions. I feel sorrier for Mouflon. She's alone with Annie.”

Karen Russell Sleep Away Camp Disordered Dreamers

“If Sawtooth could put words to the brambled knot forming in his throat, he would tell her: Girl, don't go. I am marooned in this place without you. What I feel for you is more than love. It's stronger, peninsular. You connect me to the Mainland. You are my leg of land over dark water.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Raffy has this magical, abracadabrical ability to transform all his "ifs" into "whens".”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Star Gazers Log Summer Time Crime

“It's go time.' He takes my elbow and gentles me down the planks with such tenderness that I am suddenly very afraid. But there's no sense making the plunge slow and unbearable. I take a running leap down the pier- ... -and launch over the water. It's my favorite moment: when I'm one toe away from flight and my body takes over. The choice is made, but the consequence is still just an inky shimmer beneath me. And I'm flying, I'm rushing to meet my own reflection-”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Haunting Olivia

“We sang at the chapel annexed to the home every morning. We understood that this was the humans' moon, the place for howling beyond purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything but the sound itself. And we'd howl along with the choir, hurling every pitted thing within us at the stained glass.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Even as a young man, Sawtooth had a hard time talking to women. Since moving to Out-to-Sea, he's become tight-lipped as an oyster. But he can feel the worlds pearling on his tongue: Girl, you are my moon. You are the tidal pull that keeps time marching forward.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“We know that Rangi can at least mutter because Digger Gibson says he used to talk to the bear. In his group home for orphaned Moa boys, Rangi had a pet cinnamon bear. I saw her once. She was just a wet-nosed cub, a cuff of pure white around her neck. Rangi found her on the banks of the Waitiki River and walked her around on a leash. He filed her claws and fed her tiny, smelly fishes. They shot her the day his new father, Digger, came to pick him up. "Burying that bear," I overheard Digger tell Mr. Oamaru once. "The first thing we ever did together as father and son." Rangi's given us this global silent treatment ever since, a silence he extends to people, animals, ice.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“There's something pitiable and terrifying about the unconscious bully. His crumpled nose and hat. ... This is the first true thing that Brauser and I have ever shared, this fear, besides dog-eared songbooks and cafeteria noodles. I wonder, briefly, if I could eat Brauser if it came to that. At this point, we have been alone on the glacier for fourteen minutes.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“She was still loping around on all fours, her fists blue-white from the strain. As if she were holding a secret tight to the ground. Sister Maria de la Guardia would sigh every time she saw her. "Caramba!" She'd sit down with Mirabella and pry her fingers apart. "You see?" she'd say softly, again and again. "What are you holding on to? Nothing, little one. Nothing.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as nature. The chapel was our favorite place. Long before we could understand what the priest was saying, the music instructed us in how to feel.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“But her favorite is the Houdini fantasy. Big Red disagrees with his biographers, who say that he was driven by his longing to shuck off this mortal coil. She knows that he was all the time just searching for a box that could hold him.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell The City Of Shells

“On her last visit, the girl stole one of his family photographs right out of the frame. He thinks this means she is starting to care about him, too. Now whenever he looks at the empty frame, Sawtooth is moved to tears. He has to stare straight up at the ceiling, a loophole that prevents fluid from falling out of the eyes, thus saving a man the embarrassment of crying like a damn fool infant.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Sawtooth slumps into his deck chair and stares up at the sky. It's a drunken sky, the stars hiccupping light. Great gusty clouds go spinning past the moon. The bright planets feel like pinpricks to Sawtooth's old eyes.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“It's unclear whether Brauser was trying to hit Franz Josef or Rangi. I hope it was the former. There's one difference between a bully and a hero, I guess: good aim.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Music is pleasant not only because of the sound of many voices, but because of the silence that is in it.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“I had an ear for languages, and I could read before I could adequately wash myself. I probably could have vied with Jeanette for the number one spot, but I'd seen what happened if you gave in to your natural aptitudes. This wasn't like the woods, where you had to be your fastest and your strongest and your bravest self. Different sorts of calculations were required to survive at the home.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Etiquette was so confounding in this country. Still, looking at Mirabella-her fists balled together like small, white porcupines, her brows knitted in animal confusion-I felt a throb of compassion. How can people live like they do? I wondered. Then I congragulated myself. This was a Stage 3 thought.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“I could have warned her. If we were back home, and Mirabella had come under attack by territorial beavers or snow-blind bears, I would have warned her. But the truth is that by Stage 3 I wanted her gone. Mirabella's inability to adapt was taking a visible toll. Her teeth were ground down to nubbins; her hair was falling out. ... her ribs were poking through her uniform. Her bright eyes had dulled to a sour whiskey color. But you couldn't show Mirabella the slightest kindness anymore-she'd never leave you alone!”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“I ignored her and continued down the hall. I had only four more hours to perfect the Sausalito. I was worried only about myself. By that stage, I was no longer certain of how the pack felt about anything.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“In the beginning, fifty hours sounded like a bleak ocean of time, more hours than Sawtooth wanted to spend with himself, let alone with another person. Now he needs the girl to sit and measure time with him, the way the neighbor woman needs her prescription mirror so that she doesn't forget her own face.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Increasingly, Sawtooth's own memories are a loud bright muddle, like opening the door on a party full of strangers. He lies awake at night, limping down the long corridors of his memory, trying to find the girl's hands, ...”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“He feels flattered by the attention. Most people look anywhere but his lower body. They pretend not to notice when he limps down the docks. It makes it worse, somehow, everyone pretending that he's still whole.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“The Avalanche," peacemaker Rachel recites, "is very important. It's a privilege to sing it. It's a celebration of our past." Everybody around the table smiles at her. "Yeah? Well, I've seen how easily the past can get rewritten." I glare at Mr. Oamaru. "Lyrics change. New authors come along.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“Even at this altitude, the substitute pilot's bathed in sweat, sweat running down his chin and neck. Fear must be the fountain of youth, because the substitute pilot now looks younger than any of us, doughy and flushed with horror.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“The lake water was reinventing the forest and the white moon above it, and wolves lapped up the cold reflection of the sky.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“We keep giggling, happy and nervous, tickled by an incomplete innocence. We both sense that some dark joke is being played on us, even if we can't quite grasp the punch line.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Ava Wrestles The Alligator

“Granana lives on the other side of the island. She's eighty-four, I'm twelve, and Wallow's fourteen, so it's a little ambiguous as to who's babysitting whom.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Haunting Olivia

“i haf the sownd of more words butt i coud not remember the shaps of the letters.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Ava Wrestles The Alligator

“He looks me to pieces … I realize now that I have been glimpsed and corner-of-the-eyed before, by the Chief and my sister and the yawning tourists. But I have never actually been looked at. Not like this.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Looks Seeing Staring Looking Karen Russell Male Gaze Seeing People Ava Wrestles The Alligator

“I wish I could say I gulp pure courage as I run, like those brave little girls you read about in stories, ... But this burst of speed comes from an older adrenaline, some limbic other. Not courage, but a deeper terror. I don't want to be left alone. And I am ready to defend Ossie against whatever monster I encounter, ... and save her for myself.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Ava Wrestles The Alligator

“I just want to tell her that I'm sorry," Wallow says softly. He doesn't know that I'm awake. He's talking to himself, or maybe to the ocean. There's not a trace of fear in his voice. And it's clear then that Wallow is a better brother than I could ever hope to be.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Haunting Olivia

“INERTIA: Unless an object is acted on by friction from an outside force, it will spiral through space, in the same direction at the same speed - indefinitely!”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Star Gazers Log Summer Time Crime

“The baby turtles are turning away from the ocean. It's easy to see why. The black waves lap up the moonbeams, and the starlight on the inky surface of the water gives off such a pale glow when you compare it to the megawatt flashlights that Raffy is swirling in hypnotic circles.”

Source: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Karen Russell Star Gazers Log Summer Time Crime