Karen Russell Quote

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

The lake water was reinventing the forest and the white moon above it, and wolves lapped up the cold reflection of the sky.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

We know that Rangi can at least mutter because Digger Gibson says he used to talk to the bear. In his group home for orphaned Moa boys, Rangi had a pet cinnamon bear. I saw her once. She was just a we...

Etiquette was so confounding in this country. Still, looking at Mirabella-her fists balled together like small, white porcupines, her brows knitted in animal confusion-I felt a throb of compassion. I...

There's something pitiable and terrifying about the unconscious bully. His crumpled nose and hat.... This is the first true thing that Brauser and I have ever shared, this fear, besides dog-eared song...

We keep giggling, happy and nervous, tickled by an incomplete innocence. We both sense that some dark joke is being played on us, even if we can't quite grasp the punch line.

On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as nature. The chapel was our favorite place. Long before we could understand what the priest was saying, the music instructed us in how to feel.

My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each...

We sang at the chapel annexed to the home every morning. We understood that this was the humans' moon, the place for howling beyond purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for...