Karen Russell Quotes

I spent my whole childhood trying to find places to be on my own. I used to sit on the water tank in the attic or in the dog's kennel. I was quite a strange child.

When I was growing up, the place I felt least alone was when I was reading.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.

I used to lock myself in my room and memorize scenes from films and reenact them when I was alone.

I don't know myself, what to do, where to go... I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort... it's what the world offers... please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.

I read a lot growing up. It was kind of my comfort, you know; I loved it. I love story. I love narrative. I was academic. I wasn't particularly athletic. I didn't make the drill team. I didn't go out for sports.

Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister.

As an only child lacking siblings and playmates, I was alone a great deal of the time. Much of this was spent reading virtually anything I could get my hands on.

I longed from a tiny child to get away on my own. When I was five, I walked out along the sands from Redcar, nearly all the way to Hartlepool.

I go down to my little hut, where it's tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.

The only place I can go where I'm not mobbed is my house.

I was a slightly melancholy child and I think films were a way of escaping for me.

Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who know me go, 'Oh yeah, Mailman, she's gone into her cave again.' I'm like that, a bit of a hibernating bear. Like that crocodile that just sits there in the water and doesn't do much. I was always a bit of a dreamer as a kid, so that hasn't changed.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

I had a lot of alone time with no brothers or sisters running around, or anything. I would just sit and imagine things, all the time.

Films were really my church. As a young kid, it was movies and books; it was nothing remarkable, really, just that is where I felt soothed, that is where I felt most myself... safest.

I'm lonely I'll make me a world.

I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities out of the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.

Every now and again I need to get away from everything. I'm quite a hidey-hole kind of a guy.