Karen Thompson Walker

“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.”

“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.”

“This was the first time I noticed it, the inevitable space between father and man.”

“We were like wanderers in a desert, blessed with a rare downpour, but unable to store the rain.”

“I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.”

“But the past is long, and the future is short.”

“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.”

“It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.”

“I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.”

“Fear is... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.”

“I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.”

“The only thing you have to do in this life is die," said Mrs. Pinsky..."everything else is a choice.”

“I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.”

“There's a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life.”

“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?”

“Shortly after the 2004 Indonesian earthquake, I read that the earthquake had affected the rotation of the earth, shortening the length of our 24-hour day. Even though the change was extremely slight - only a few microseconds - I found the idea incredibly haunting.”

“To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.”