Quotes from Karen Russell

Turn the lights of please, Ava," she whispered, and I remember her breath hot and rummy on our cheeks. To this day I think of rum as a marine smell; the scent of it on an adult's breath turned the world as small and dark as a boat hold.

INERTIA: Unless an object is acted on by friction from an outside force, it will spiral through space, in the same direction at the same speed - indefinitely!

Sand, sand, sand—all that pulverized time. Eons ago, the world's burst hourglass spilled its contents here; now the years pile and spin, waiting with inhuman patience to be swept into some future ocean. Sand washes right up to the paved road, washes over to the other side in a solid orange current, illuminated by their headlights.

The baby turtles are turning away from the ocean. It's easy to see why. The black waves lap up the moonbeams, and the starlight on the inky surface of the water gives off such a pale glow when you compare it to the megawatt flashlights that Raffy is swirling in hypnotic circles.

it had taken years before their affair was truly over. You had to really cultivate an ending. To get it to last, you had to kneel and tend to the burial ground, continuously firming your resolution.

For the duration of our friendship, we'd trade off roles like this: anchor and boat, beholder and beheld.

with a little penguin huddle of moles just above her hip, looking lost on that Arctic shelf.

the trees get angry if you bring flashlights or candles Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â "You girls want an underworld?" The Chief's booming laugh was directed

Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children. After

A volte penso che il dottore giusto saprebbe aprirmi il petto e trovarla lì, mia sorella, incastonata dentro di me, come un viso su un medaglione

It occurred to me that, given the life span of a moth, one kid's twitch must take a year to complete.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.

Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn't have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn't be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library's peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light…

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather. One such melting occurs in summer rain, at midnight, during the vine-green breathing time right before sleep. You have to ask the right question, throw the right rope bridge, to get there-and then bolt across the chasm between you, before your bridge collapses.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

She used to suffer these intense bouts of homesickness in her own bedroom. When she was very small, she would wake up tearing at her bedspread and shrieking, "I wanna go home! I wanna go home!" Which was distressing to all of us, of course, because she was home.

No, I don't have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don't know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

Somehow I wasn't adding up right anymore. My parts weren't summing into myself.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

But if you kept thinking about a fight you'd lost, Mom said, you were programming yourself to lose again.

Any place, then, can become a cemetery. All it takes is your body. It's not fair, I think, and I get this petulant wish for ugly flowers and mourners, my mother's old familiar grief. Somebody I love to tend my future grave. Probably this is the wrong thing to be wishing for.