46+ Karen Thompson Walker Quotes On Friendship, Education And Feminism

Karen Thompson Walker is an American author and novelist. She is best known for her debut novel, The Age of Miracles, which was published in 2012 and was a New York Times bestseller. Walker has also written a collection of short stories, titled When You Find Me, which was published in 2020. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Karen Thompson Walker on love, friendship, education.

Top 10 Karen Thompson Walker Quotes

1. 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.
2. Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.
3. We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.
4. I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.
5. An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer.
6. It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.
7. To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.
8. It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.
9. It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.
10. My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

Karen Thompson Walker Short Quotes

• But the past is long, and the future is short.
• In general, I think I'm quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.
• If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.
• Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.
• Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve.
• Who knows how fast a second-guess can travel? Who has ever measured the exact speed of regret?
• Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy.
• Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted.
• There's a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life.
• Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Karen Thompson Walker Quotes About Love

I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm. I could see the future: My father wasn't coming back. And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end. — Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

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

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

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

Karen Thompson Walker Quotes About Writing

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

I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I hope that people continue to read books, even though we have so many other options for entertainment. — Karen Thompson Walker

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. — Karen Thompson Walker

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. — Karen Thompson Walker

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions. — Karen Thompson Walker

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

Karen Thompson Walker Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Karen Thompson Walker

Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, or having earthquake supplies. The looming feeling was part of my life. My experience of earthquakes has always been more the fear of them, or the possibility. — Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

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. — Karen Thompson Walker

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself. — Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

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

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. — Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

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

Sentences or solutions occur to me in the shower, or while running on the treadmill, or riding on the subway. — Karen Thompson Walker

Life Lessons by Karen Thompson Walker

1. Karen Thompson Walker emphasizes the importance of taking risks and embracing uncertainty in order to make progress in life.
2. She encourages readers to be creative and to use their imagination to explore new possibilities.
3. She also encourages readers to be resilient and to never give up, even when faced with adversity.