Quotes by Karen Joy Fowler

An attack on SeaWorld might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesnt always seem to distinguish between the two.

I admired her choices though I wouldnt have made them.

The idea of our own rationality...was convincing to us only because we so wished to be convinced. To any impartial observer, could such a thing exist, the sham was patent. Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Without our listening, all the stories are the same story.

Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Because what could be more Casablanca? Suddenly Harlow saw that what she’d always wanted was a man of principle. A man of action. A domestic terrorist. Every girl’s dream, if she can’t have a vampire. (Chapter four pg 202)

You can’t imagine the white-hot fury someone who can’t sleep has toward the beautiful dreamer beside him.

A nonhuman animal had better have a good lawyer. In 1508, Bartholomé Chassenée earned fame and fortune for his eloquent representation of the rats of his French province. These rats had been charged with destroying the barley crop and also with ignoring the court order to appear and defend themselves. Bartholomé Chassenée argued successfully that the rats hadnt come because the court had failed to provide reasonable protection from the village cats along the route.

Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it’s our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is.

Out there is South Dakota, Kitch had said, Matt said they treated Fern like some kind of animal.

We are so excited that, in the strangely illuminating phrase my mother favours, we’re completely beside ourselves.

There was no point in telling my father. Hed never let me quit after only one day. He couldnt help me and hed make some terrible blunder if he tried. Parents are too innocent for the Boschian landscapes of middle school.

So many problems, however infinitely varied they first appear, turn out to be matters of money. I cant tell you how much this offends me.

Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness.

We dont choose whom we love,” he told Maura, so gently that she knew he knew. If she wasnt going to be loved in return, she would have liked not to be pitied for it. She got neither of these wishes. “But people have this advantage over swans, to put their unwise loves aside and love another. Not me. Im too much swan for that.

He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed.

The dogs came racing up the stairs. They danced at Rimas feet, frantic with the need to communicate something to her. Little Timmys down the well! Feed us ice cream and potato chips! Sometimes theres a benefit to not sharing a language.

But I knew that, both in fairyland and the real world, too, wishes were a slipperier things.

Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come.

Like they say, you never know a person till you’ve done time with them.