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

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

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

- Karen Thompson Walker

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices …

- Karen Thompson Walker

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

- 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

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

- Karen Thompson Walker

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

- 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…

- Karen Thompson Walker