Karen Thompson Walker Stories Quotations

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.