It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.

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• Karen Thompson Walker:

  I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound go

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is:

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but the

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  I love conventional apocalypse movies. In movies, I like to be with the president, or the scientist

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  In general, I think I'm quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, o

• Karen Thompson Walker:

  I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for t