Kathryn Harrison Quotes

I'll never have so compelling a figure within my embrace as Joan of Arc; there will never be a book whose last chapter is so very hard to get right. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I reread 'Nicholas and Alexandra' in my early twenties, and I never forgot the story. ~ Kathryn Harrison

For me, writing is inseparable from thinking. I could say the entire undertaking is a vast cerebral construct against my demons. It's the thing that I love. It's my identity. ~ Kathryn Harrison

When I was eleven, my mother gave me Robert K. Massie's 'Nicholas and Alexandra.' It was the first 'grownup' book I read, and I loved it. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me. ~ Kathryn Harrison

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I was the good girl who never needed disciplining, who made straight A's. I applied and was accepted to Stanford University. ~ Kathryn Harrison

The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity. ~ Kathryn Harrison

The Russian revolution is one of history's car wrecks. We do know the ending, but we continue to watch. It expresses aspects of human nature we find unacceptable. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I'm not an investigative journalist; I don't track crime or police blotters. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Scars are stories, history written on the body ~ Kathryn Harrison

I like vampires, tuberculosis, anything to do with blood. Then I read a biography of Rasputin and found out he'd had this daughter who had become a famous lion tamer and been billed as the daughter of the mad monk who was able to hypnotize animals with her eyes. It gave me a vision. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I admire cool renderings of hot topics. ~ Kathryn Harrison

One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I've always been interested in the intersection between our rational and our unconscious lives. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching people reveal themselves, ever more deeply, more intimately. ~ Kathryn Harrison

A lot of writers dwell on their relationships with their mothers, but only a few are worth reading. ~ Kathryn Harrison

For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France. ~ Kathryn Harrison

How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer! ~ Kathryn Harrison

Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Lives that are so conspicuous have a claustrophobic feeling. Once you're in charge of running a country, you're under scrutiny all the time. That's a trap. ~ Kathryn Harrison

If complete enlightenment demands relinquishing the self, then complete enlightenment implies the acceptance of mortality. Not that there isn't more to being enlightened than accepting that our lives are brief and end when we did. But I do think it's a requirement. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I love any book that makes my family seem almost normal. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Rasputin's daughter understands the revolution. She would have been an outsider, a spectator in the royal family and to the revolution. ~ Kathryn Harrison

The least likely of military leaders, Joan of Arc changed the course of the Hundred Years' War and of history. ~ Kathryn Harrison

My days are as long as despair can make them. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I used to enjoy reading true crime, but I've discovered that I don't have the journalism nose for blood. ~ Kathryn Harrison

It's hard for me not to have a great deal of compassion for the last Romanov family because, really, I don't know if a politically savvy ruler would have been able to make the situation turn out much differently. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I work in a small study on the top floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn - it's about 75 square feet, 11 taken up by book shelves along one wall. ~ Kathryn Harrison

The road always stretches endlessly ahead and behind us, so that we are out of time as well as out of place. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks. And if you've read your Edith Hamilton or Jane Harrison - or the Old Testament, for that matter - you'll know that gods acted like men most of the time, or worse. ~ Greg Iles

But then that's an appropriate response to death?' I interrupted.
'There isn't a singular response. You keep on truckin', as that cartoonist Crumb said. You're probably having a thousand responses a day because your brain simply can't stop trying to comprehend what has happened to you. It's the largest question mark we deal with in life and no responses will make it go away. We envy the devout who experience the pain but have a surefire explanation. ~ Jim Harrison

We ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen. ~ Kathryn Stockett

We are all naturally xenophobic. ~ Jim Harrison

I did a film called 'Patriot Games' with Harrison Ford, and we actually shot three different versions of my death. And they settled on the third. ~ Sean Bean

Head lowered, Al looked at his bare hands, folded in his lap. "I knew you could, otherwise I wouldn't have let you get into that position. But now everyone else knows it, too. I wasn't expecting how vulnerable you would be,
and word gets around. It is too easy for ... " He hesitated. "You're so damn
helpless ... ," he tried again, his words cutting off once more. "How am I supposed to keep them off you now that they know? ~ Kim Harrison

St. Thomas Aquinas, she knew, was reputed to say that he feared the man who had just one book, and she understood what he meant about the narrowness of outlook that could give. However, she thought, perhaps a man with one well-loved book might be a more rounded individual than the man who possessed hundreds and never opened any of them. ~ Cora Harrison

Winona! I said, quashing my first initial panic at finding a horned, tailed, demonic creature smiling at me. ~ Kim Harrison

You bet your Grannie's Panties I will. ~ Kim Harrison

Most of the upper management of I.S. were undead. I always thought it was because the job was easier if you didn't have a soul. ~ Kim Harrison

Jenks kept me alive for two years through two death threats, a crazy banshee, and at least two serial killers. Its about time I return the favor! And if I can't, then I can sit by his bed and hold his hand as he dies, 'cause I've had plenty of practice doing that, too! ~ Kim Harrison

Intelligence resembles insanity only on the stupid. ~ Harry Harrison

A good ground rule for writing in any genre is, start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what it's afraid of, what it's trying to hide - then write that. ~ M. John Harrison

The sound of the ice cream churning outside sounds like bones crunching. ~ Kathryn Stockett

She had given me a piece of what made her life sane. ~ Kim Harrison

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power. ~ William Henry Harrison

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels. ~ Jim Harrison

I had a conversation with somebody. It was an epiphany." His voice was rueful. He rocked her. "From that point on I swore I would never eat something that could talk. ~ Thea Harrison

AUM is the sound of oneness, the sound that unites us all. Chanting AUM connects humans back to their Cosmic Source in a real way. ~ Harrison Graves

We are all mediums for our own basic truths. All we really have in life is the primal force that moves us through our days
our unvarnished, untutored, ever-present, inborn agency. ~ A.S.A Harrison

Your welcome means more to me, Ivy Alisha Tamwood, than a thousand souls. Watching Rachel work is a wonder of one catastrophe after another. ~ Kim Harrison

Fill your office with plants and flowers. Spider plants and plants with hairy leaves absorb air pollutants (such as formaldehyde), produce oxygen, and add color to ease you eyes. Chrysanthemums, azaleas, and Gerbera daisies are similarly helpful. ~ Lewis Harrison

Peace of the sort that brings wholeness, harmony, and health to our lives only happens when chaos, confusion, and conflict are included and transcended. ~ Harrison Owen

Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure. ~ Benjamin Harrison

To err is to wander and wandering is the way we discover the world and lost in thought it is the also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying but in the end it is static a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling and sometimes even dangerous but in the end it is a journey and a story. Who really wants to stay at home and be right when you can don your armor spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world True you might get lost along get stranded in a swamp have a scare at the edge of a cliff thieves might steal your gold brigands might imprison you in a cave sorcerers might turn you into a toad but what of what To fuck up is to find adventure: it is in the spirit that this book is written. ~ Kathryn Schulz

Even though I didn't think I'd like empathy it kind of creeps up on you and makes you feel all warm and glowy inside. I don't think I want to go back to life without empathy. ~ Kathryn Erskine

I completely remember the horror I felt when my pits started getting hairy. I would walk with my arms pressed against my sides. ~ Lisi Harrison

The poems in Katherine Soniat's new collection, The Swing Girl, weave emotion's 'spray going farther than thought' with the 'bedrock things' of the trod-upon world. These poems eddy and pool in unpredictable and often surprising ways, much as the mind moves in its twilight state between waking and sleep. The fluidity of their cadence and the luminosity of their imagery carry the reader to the wellspring of poetry itself, that deep delight of which Robert Penn Warren spoke, whose source is, in Soniat's words, 'beauty on its way to being mystery.' ~ Kathryn Stripling Byer

He was surrounded by people who loved him, yet he had never felt lonelier. ~ Thea Harrison

I was on a sitcom called 'Gary Unmarried' for 37 episodes, and then I was in 'Bad Teacher' with Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. ~ Kathryn Newton

We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions - and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another. ~ A.S.A Harrison

As a geologist, I love Earth observations, but it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. 'Consensus,' as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. ~ Harrison Schmitt

The dragon raised his head and snorted repulsively, "Keep you as a slave? Never! I could do more for myself in a moment than you could for me in a lifetime... ~ Kathryn Fogleman

I have two young kids. So my VCR, like, you kind of have to sift through a lot of, like, 'Animal Mechanicals,' 'Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.' ~ Kathryn Hahn

How better to show your respect for another person's thoughts than by silence? Is it polite to cover those thoughts with your own ideas? What is polite about that? ~ Sue Harrison

Be
Beware of sadness It can hit you It can hurt you Make you sore and what is more That is not what we are here for. ~ George Harrison

But doing something means that people must change, make an effort, use their minds, which is what most people do not like to do. ~ Harry Harrison

[After playing Indiana Jones and Han Solo] hero image concerns me a little, though not for my sake. All it means to me is that I have a responsibility not to get caught doing anything terrible and thereby jeopardise my credentials. Not that I do terrible things, like running over dogs or anything like that. It just makes you think twice before you say or do things in public. ~ Harrison Ford

I would have sworn fairies were too big to fit into a frog's mouth. ~ Kim Harrison

He darted a guilty look toward his dad. "Will you - get me a bottle of spicy?"
My eyes jerked to his.
"Maybe some barbecue sauce?"
I closed my mouth before a bug flew into it. "Sure." I did not believe this. I was pimping ketchup to the son of the FIB's captain. ~ Kim Harrison

I like working. It is where I feel useful. I have no plans to cut down. I am happy with what I do. There will be a lot more of me yet, that's for sure. ~ Harrison Ford

I knew it was a trap, itchy witch," the demon said, but then a flash of white exploded against the inside of the circle. I felt the bubble go down, leaving a white disk of ash where the carpet had burned away. "But I didn't know it was a lethal one," he continued, ~ Kim Harrison

Bethany, you're going to take him on one of your little joy rides, aren't you?" Her grin broadened.
"Damn, you're ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. I don't want you tangling with the cops again. ~ Kathryn Loch

Hallelujah can barely breathe through the pain of each step. Rachel is panting from the effort of holding Hallelujah up. Still, when they get closer to the clearing, Rachel manages to call out: "Jonah! Help!"
There's a rustling noise up ahead. Twigs snapping. And then Jonah appears. His face is in shadow, but his voice is worried: "What happened?"
"I turned my ankle," Hallelujah says. "I'm okay."
"She's not okay," Rachel gasps. "She can't put weight on it. Can you carry her?"
Jonah doesn't hesitate. He wraps one arm around Hallelujah's waist, and then he scoops up her legs with the other. In a single, fluid motion, she's off the ground. She holds on to his shoulders. For a second, she thinks about how strange this is - to be held like this, to be held by Jonah. ~ Kathryn Holmes

Death should be a seduction, not a rape. ~ A.S.A Harrison

For every round peg society forces into a square hole, another brick is laid, building the walls that will eventually close us off from the possibility of living with purpose and passion. ~ Kathryn Perez

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific! ~ Harrison Birtwistle

One of the curious effects of a bad hangover is that you think you're wrong whether you are or not. Not wrong in particulars, but wrong in general, wrong about everything. ~ Jim Harrison