Karen Thompson Walker
Karen Thompson Walker
The Age of Miracles is the debut novel of American writer Karen Thompson Walker, published in June 2012 by Random House in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. The book chronicles the fictional phenomenon of 'slowing', in which one Earth day takes longer to complete...
ProfessionAuthor
amazing fears future gift influence might time
Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
disappointment age would-be
How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.
beautiful girl summer
This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall.
beautiful writing college
I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.
goal way stories
My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.
moving writing editing
I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.
jobs stories texture
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.
beautiful writing night
As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
reading writing editors
Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.
years looks fiction
It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.
heart eye years
With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn't it?
bravery kind certain
It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.
christian miracle different
We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.
growing-up earthquakes feelings
Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, or having earthquake supplies. The looming feeling was part of my life. My experience of earthquakes has always been more the fear of them, or the possibility.