These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They’re the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us. Karen Thompson Walker Read Quote
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 Read Quote
It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty. Karen Thompson Walker Read Quote
I left my job in the fall, and now I can set my life up around writing instead of squeezing writing into my day; it’s amazing to have that time, and I feel very lucky. Karen Thompson Walker Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination… 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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I’ve always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there’s so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines. Karen Thompson Walker Read Quote
