A Quote by Karen Thompson Walker

I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message. — © Karen Thompson Walker
I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.
I'm such a dork, but I really think there are derivatives to be found between story arcs and character motivations. And the way you evaluate functions is a really interesting way to look at stories and the way you act. I really believe it.
I don't necessarily think stories have functions any more than diamonds have functions, or the sky has a function... Stories exist. They keep us sane, I think. We tell each other stories, we believe stories. I love watching the slow rise of the urban legend. They're the stories that we use to explain ourselves to ourselves.
I've been writing long enough to know that fiction, as a rhetorical mode, works very differently from expository writing. If an author has a specific critique about contemporary society in mind, fiction tends not to be the best means to deliver that critique.
You deliver a message every time you speak. Do you deliver the truth, or do you deliver lies? When the message you deliver comes from truth and love, you are happier.
Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
We set out from the start to deliver a very inspiring message, certainly what can be done up in space and the possibilities there, but also what we can accomplish here on Earth.
I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to be - there's a big literature of trailer-park, kitchen-table fiction that's just about goings-on in the lives of ordinary people - but my own tastes run toward stories that in addition to being good stories are set against a backdrop that is interesting to read and learn about.
In the home we make certain distinctions about functions of rooms and corridors; we do not deliver the groceries straight into the baby's crib. In hospitals we do not take the food trolleys right through the operating chamber, and we rarely have the recreation room next to the convalescent room. We sort out the functions. We have to sort out the functions of the city and the streams of traffic and re-create arterial systems that allow us to breathe ... the shape, pattern and sense of community which you expect if it were a home.
If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.
I set out to create chips that used low-energy technology, and that has allowed me to develop devices that can do all their data crunching on site.
I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.
I used to be really into traditional meditation, but I found that creating new music is the best meditation. When I'm able to get into that space, nothing else matters, and I'm just a vessel for whatever the message is; I feel like I'm not in control. It's like this organic communication, and I feel like that is the quiet, in a way.
I'm always interested in telling stories that have a message because I really do believe that film is so powerful.
I had really specific ideas of what kind of mom I was going to be and what kind of things I was going to provide for my child - even down to the organic, wooden toys Birdie was going to be allowed to chew on. Then cut to my daughter being obsessed with every plastic, 99-cent store toy.
The hardest thing to get right is to figure out how to bring all those characters together, and to fulfill the promise of The Avengers. They really set a very high bar for themselves because you've been setting this coalition up, for these five movies, and they better deliver. And in my opinion, they thoroughly deliver.
We want to develop a technology that's globally applicable, that's not customized for a specific city or a specific country. The only way to do that is to be able to test every day in a diversity of environments.
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