Karen Elson Quotes

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.

It's no coincidence that I began writing the day my daughter started school. I knew everything I knew before I began to write, but I was raising two children and didn't have the time to get to the typewriter.

I won't say I am a strict mother, but discipline is important. Timing and routine are important for kids.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

I'm not trying to be a role model to kids, because I don't have any children, but I do think everyone should have a free spirit.

I am a highly disciplined person. I get up at seven every morning and, still in my pajamas, sit down at my desk where my checkered ring binders and my fountain pen are ready for use. I try to write two pages every day.

Being a mother has absolutely forced me. You have to write things down and have systems for all of it. And then you set up systems and you realize they don't work.

It was by coincidence that I ended up opening my first shop in 1968, and I haven't stopped since. I now find myself trying to do everything. I couldn't live without creating my collections, without writing, drawing and reading. But I couldn't either live without being close to my children on a daily basis and also to my grandchildren, and to all the people I love. I guess I am like every woman today, one who juggles her work and family life.

A lot of artists need structure.

The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.

I am very fulfilled in my home life, and what films do for me is to create an ironclad structure that, in my life as a mom, does not exist. It is a shapeless blob of happy chaos.

Sure, it's simple, writing for kids... Just as simple as bringing them up.

Can you write a book and have children at the same time? Yes, if you're content to do it very very slowly.

People don't write about kids; you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.

I think appointments are caustic to creativity.

Children make that big a difference to you? He asked. I nodded. Yeah, they do. I never figured you as the maternal type. I'm not, but kids are people, Edward, little people trapped by the choices the adults around them make.

Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.

One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!

A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people.

Religious law is like the grammar of language. Any language isgoverned by such rules; otherwise it ceases to be a language. But within them, you can say many different sentences and write many different books.

I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.

Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It's calming.

I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket.

You see, with [designing]weapons, it is like a woman who bears children. For months she carries her baby and thinks about it. A designer does much the same thing with a prototype. I felt like a mother - always proud. It is a special feeling, as if you were awarded with a special award. I shot with it a lot. I still do now. That is why I am hard of hearing.

I have abandoned so many projects but in the '80s when I left public life to be married and have real children - I love my children and I would never sacrifice them for anything - I had to find a way to simultaneously be a mother and wife and fulfill my duties and still be true to myself as a writer.