Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Karen Thompson Walker
Tell
Efficient
Stories
Crucial
Part
Sentences
Clearly
Reader
Sharper
Learned
Empathize
Learning
Gradually
Imagine
Imagined

More quotes by Karen Thompson Walker

Image
How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
In general, I think I'm quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
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
Image
But the past is long, and the future is short.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
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
Image
Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
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
Image
To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
There's a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life.
Karen Thompson Walker
Image
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
Image
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