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My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories.

Karen Thompson Walker

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Karen Thompson Walker
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More quotes by Karen Thompson Walker

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Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular blend of beauty and disaster, of danger and denial.
Karen Thompson Walker
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But the past is long, and the future is short.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I love conventional apocalypse movies. In movies, I like to be with the President, or the scientist trying to solve the problem, but that's not the kind of fiction that I like to read.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted.
Karen Thompson Walker
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My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.
Karen Thompson Walker
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To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?
Karen Thompson Walker
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I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily life, how she captures so much meaning and consequence in the smallest details of a day.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I'm an only child, and I think one of the sweet things about that is that my parents are really interested in every aspect of my life.
Karen Thompson Walker
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In general, I think I'm quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Some say that love is the sweetest feeling, the purest form of joy, but that isn't right. It's not love--it's relief.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy.
Karen Thompson Walker
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As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I wake up fairly early every day, by 8, for sure. Sunday is a lighter writing day than the weekdays, but I still wake up and write for about an hour, beginning right around 8. I definitely have coffee first, and then I start writing. I do think it's kind of hard to get the right level of concentration without coffee.
Karen Thompson Walker
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I tend to mostly take the day off from working on Sundays, but I do spend some time reading. Mostly what I'm picking up is what's in stores. I really do love to read fiction from the last year or two.
Karen Thompson Walker
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Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
Karen Thompson Walker