Karen Joy Fowler quotes - page 2

Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section. (Karen Joy Fowler)
Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
But no one is easier to delude than a parent; they see only what they wish to see. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
Just ask yourself, if we weren't taught to be women, what would we be? (Ask yourself this question even if you're a man, and don't cheat by changing the words.) View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
You know, I don't think there's anything truly unforgivable. Not where there's love. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
The world runs,” Lowell said, "on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don't mind what they don't see. Make them look and they mind, but you're the one they hate, because you're the one that made them look. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
You've done so many things and read so many books. Do you still believe in happy endings?" "Oh my Lord, yes." Bernadette's hands were pressed against each other like a book, like a prayer. "I guess I would. I've had about a hundred of them. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I learned how to comport myself among trolls, elves, hobbits or goblins. I learned that a friend can be lost to greed and avarice. I learned that solving riddles may be as important a survival skill as bowmanship. I know how to talk to a dragon, and that it's best not to. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I do read all my work aloud as I'm working - this has made it a little hard to adjust to my husband's retirement. I can shout the shouty parts if I'm alone in the house, but of course, I feel a fool if someone is there to hear me. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter. (Karen Joy Fowler)
The smart way to build a literary career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that product so people know what they are going to get. That's the smart way to build a career, but not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier. That's an option, too. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I assume that we are all limited by our own brains and experiences and can only understand other people and other creatures through a kind of translation that brings them closer to us. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
My books have occasionally been of mixed success. It's not like I have gone from triumph to triumph. I have had a couple of books do very, very well and a couple do very, very badly. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
If we see a sad rain, it doesn't mean the rain is sad, but it means we see it. That's an easily dismissible kind of projection. But what I'm struggling to say, is that we take that rain in through our own hearts and emotions and senses and skin, and all those filters have an impact. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
In certain ways, we, many of us, stopped paying attention to the world. I have to think we would have moved on the whole climate issue in a different way if we'd been paying better attention. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I had a very loyal cult-like following, I feel. And I don't mean to complain about that. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I have always been a generous and enthusiastic reader. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science. (Karen Joy Fowler)
Pheromones are Earth's primordial idiom. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
We all have a sense of level. It may not be based on class exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we're entitled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. The pretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly. To the detriment of the breed. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler