Karen Joy Fowler

If we see a sad rain, it doesn't mean the rain is sad, but it means we see it. That's an easily dismissible kind of projection. But what I'm struggling to say, is that we take that rain in through our own hearts and emotions and senses and skin, and all those filters have an impact.

The smart way to build a literary career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that product so people know what they are going to get. That's the smart way to build a career, but not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier. That's an option, too.

I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer.

Miss Sarzin was the best teacher I ever had.

I have always been a generous and enthusiastic reader.

Octavia Butler often described herself as an outsider, but within science fiction, she was loved as an insider, someone who was a fan first and came to S.F. writing as an enthusiastic reader.

I learned how to comport myself among trolls, elves, hobbits or goblins. I learned that a friend can be lost to greed and avarice. I learned that solving riddles may be as important a survival skill as bowmanship. I know how to talk to a dragon, and that it's best not to.

If I'm made to pick one transcendent reading experience, then it was listening to Miss Sarzin as - if we'd been very, very good - she read the next chapter of 'The Hobbit' aloud to us.

I assume that we are all limited by our own brains and experiences and can only understand other people and other creatures through a kind of translation that brings them closer to us.

Technically a memoir, 'The Woman Warrior' becomes almost magical through its inclusion of folk tales, dreams, and revisions.

My books have occasionally been of mixed success. It's not like I have gone from triumph to triumph. I have had a couple of books do very, very well and a couple do very, very badly.

I can't say that winning the Pen/Faulkner was a dream come true because I would never have dared to dream it.