Christina Baker Kline
Christina Baker Kline
Christina Baker Klineis an American novelist. She is the author of five novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train, and has co-authored or edited five non-fiction books. Kline is the recipient of several Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowships and has received numerous other awards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
efficient exactly less lines manages prepared question sets spends time
There's no question that my son is better prepared for college than I was. He manages his time better, is more efficient and more directed, and spends less time in lines and more time doing exactly what he sets out to do.
autograph available copies ideal next novel six weeks
In my ideal world, my next novel would have a first printing of, say, 2,500 hardcovers for reviewers, libraries, collectors, and autograph hounds. The publisher could print more copies if they get low. And simultaneously, or six weeks later, the book would be available in paperback.
bookstores chain companies editors hard laid large online retailers
It's hard selling books in general: companies are merging, editors being laid off, bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing, large chain bookstores squeezing out independents, and online retailers squeezing out chain bookstores.
domestic genuinely novel
When I start a new novel and find myself diverted by domestic activities, many of which I genuinely enjoy, I panic that I will never write another word.
book campaign cover crafted impact marketing maybe year
With a hardcover, you get two chances, a year apart, for the book to make an impact - often with a new cover featuring artfully crafted snippets of reviews, a new marketing campaign and maybe even a new publisher.
mind moments disappear
Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.
dream play decision
When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.
broken-inside expression empathy
She knows too well what it's like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb....The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so yo learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.
trying be-kind assumption
I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.
selfish broken-inside people
I know too much; I've seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile, to nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.
song love-you writing
I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.
broken-inside looks lucky
And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.
life throws
You have to try to take what life throws at you with grace and equanimity.
few hats humans needles orbit suddenly sweaters wear yarn
For a few years, skeins of yarn piled up in baskets around the house. There weren't enough humans in my mother's orbit to wear all the scarves and sweaters and hats she knitted. And then, as suddenly as she started, she lost interest, leaving needles still entwined in half-finished fragments.