Category - Karen Thompson Walker

Karen Thompson Walker

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

Karen Thompson Walker

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

Karen Thompson Walker

The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy, ‘The Virgin Suicides’ by Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ by Jhumpa Lahiri, and ‘Blindness’ by Jose Saramago.

– Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

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

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

Karen Thompson Walker

In general, I think I’m quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.

– Karen Thompson Walker

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

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

Karen Thompson Walker

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I’m haunted by it.

– Karen Thompson Walker

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

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