16 Quotes by Ellen Klages

Time has become quiet flexible inside the library. (This is true of most places with interesting books. Sit down to read for twenty minutes, and suddenly it's dark, with no clue as to where the hours have gone.)

This is overdue. Quite a bit, I'm afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I'm sure she'll be happy there.

At least once a week, Dinsy was amused by the indignant sputtering of someone who had just spooned dill weed, not sugar, into a cup of Earl Grey tea.

My father once told me that I have a mind like a lint trap - I pull stuff out of everything, and a lot of it just clings.

I've come to realize that artists and scientists are alike. They go through the same processes using different tools. They are both driven to answer the question, 'What if?'

My process is messy and non-linear, full of false starts, fidgets, and errands that I suddenly need to run now; it is a battle to get something - anything - down on paper. I doodle in sketchbooks: bits of ideas, fragments of sentences, character names, single lines of dialogue with no context.

Short stories are my favorite art form. A good one is compact and complete, a telling little slice of life, capturing a moment in time that - for the character - defines her, changes her, is the tipping point for all that will follow.

When I write, I try to capture one of those pivotal moments. If I succeed, I have shifted the reader's view of the world, just a little. The character is not the only one to experience change. That is my job, shifting perceptions, one story at a time. The trouble is, I don't like writing. But I love having written.

I liked science. It was about the only thing that stayed the same wherever we moved.