Karen Russell Quotes

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

Karen Russell

• Writing
• Perfection
• Flexibility
• Playfulness

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Quotes to Explore

• I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Time
  • Good
  • Writing

• Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.

  

  Ian Doescher
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Star

• Writing a tribe is fun. They have their own language, their own slang; they repeat it, and it becomes part of the texture of the play. For a writer, that's thrilling. That's when my pen flies.

  

  Laura Wade
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Language

• I love writing songs.

  

  Sade Adu
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Songs

• Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Life
  • Work
  • Writing

• Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.

  

  Patrick Modiano
  • Writing
  • Day
  • Everyday

• Yoga helps me with a composed and serene state of mind, which is good for writing.

  

  Damon Galgut
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Mind

• Music has always been a huge passion in my life. I've just had such success with my acting that it's really been right alongside of it, and I've always been writing and playing and singing.

  

  Olivia d'Abo
  • Life
  • Music
  • Writing

• Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for 'Pop' magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.

  

  Tavi Gevinson
  • Writing
  • Desire
  • Learning

• Writing is a discipline: it's almost all about holding back.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Writing
  • Discipline
  • Back

• In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art's sake. I didn't necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would.

  

  Wallace Shawn
  • People
  • Writing
  • Mind

• Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Great
  • American
  • Style

• People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • People
  • Writing
  • Year

• When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into to pull out edicts and prejudices and rules and opinions, and I wish they had fact-checked it! Especially Rick Santorum.

  

  Walter Kirn
  • People
  • Writing
  • Black

• From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

  

  Joe Eszterhas
  • Writing
  • Heart
  • Power

• One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

  

  Andre Dubus III
  • Life
  • Good
  • Work

• With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.

  

  Jim Rash
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Hate

• In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

  

  Paulo Coelho
  • Writing
  • Respect

• You gotta trust your artist. I love writing pages without dialogue, which seems weird, I guess. But few things are as powerful in comics as a really strong silent page.

  

  Jason Aaron
  • Writing
  • Strong
  • Trust

• Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary. The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.

  

  Rachel Carson
  • Nature
  • Sea

• Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice, but I denounce political extremism, of the left or the right, based on duplicity, falsehood, fear, violence and threats when they endanger liberty.

  

  George W. Romney
  • Fear
  • Liberty
  • Extremism

• I think sometimes all the charities are doing is mopping up the blood. It's a shame.

  

  Thom Yorke Radiohead
  • Up

• I like it when I go into a cinema and I'm not aware that I'm there; I'm totally involved in the film for two hours.

  

  Atticus Ross Nine Inch Nails

• Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

  

  Karen Russell
  • Writing
  • Perfection
  • Flexibility