181 Quotes by Karen Joy Fowler

"Octavia Butler was more interested in writing a good story than in worrying about where to slot it."

"Technically a memoir, 'The Woman Warrior' becomes almost magical through its inclusion of folk tales, dreams, and revisions."

"Butler's novel 'Kindred' may be the book most widely read by readers outside science fiction; it has been assigned as a text in classrooms and has sold steadily since its publication in 1979."

"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."

"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."

"I hear so many writers say - and these are writers that I trust completely - 'I just started hearing a voice', or, 'The characters came to life'. I am filled with loathing for my own characters when I hear that because they do nothing of the sort. Left to their own devices, they do nothing but drink coffee and complain about their lives."

"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."

"If I'm made to pick one transcendent reading experience, then it was listening to Miss Sarzin as - if we'd been very, very good - she read the next chapter of 'The Hobbit' aloud to us."

"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."

"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."