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Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

Karen Russell

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Karen Russell
Age: 43
Born: 1981
Born: July 10
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Miami
Florida
Writing
Flexibility
Perfection
Necessary
Joy
Spacious
Stop
Playfulness
Place
Desk
Become
Demanding
Self
Desks

More quotes by Karen Russell

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It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel.
Karen Russell
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When I was younger I used to lock myself in the bathroom and read in the dry tub. I was also a fan of the 'shoe closet.' Reading felt thrilling and illicit and deeply private to me, and I felt vulnerable doing it in public.
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Tin House magazine is a port in the storm for people who love language. It is unfailingly excellent, and committed to publishing new voices in addition to delivering freaky-fresh work from established writers.
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I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.
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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.
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My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.
Karen Russell
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Mythology is a really beautiful vocabulary passed down through centuries that helps us understand the perennial parts of our nature.
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My favorite classes were always dumb nerdy vocabulary.
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If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird.
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I moved to New York with the derangement of love. I was writing all these terrible stories, but I had never been happier.
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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
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It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.
Karen Russell
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I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.
Karen Russell
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Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.
Karen Russell
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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
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I'm not going anywhere, she told me that night. But until we are old ladies-a cypress age, a Sawtooth age-I will continue to link arms with her, in public, in private, in a panic of love.
Karen Russell
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When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.
Karen Russell
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There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.
Karen Russell
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Pain collected into deep pockets and I was aware of this painbut somehow I could not seem to feel it. It was like a body-deafness.
Karen Russell
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I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird sibling tales.
Karen Russell