Karin Kaufman Quotes

“I don't have any big adventures.""But of course you have big adventures," Papa said. You have adventures of all sorts, all the time.""Not like Radish in the Book of Tales," Geraldine said, scuffing a toe along the ground. "I could never be like Radish.""No, you don't have adventures exactly like Radish," Papa said. "But that's because you're not Radish and you must have your own adventures. All creatures must.""Happy ones?" Geraldine asked."In the end, yes. But they won't all seem that way at first. They'll have unexpected twists and turns. You must let them play out to the end, like a story in the Book of Tales. Follow God, speak to him and listen to him, and all tales will be beautiful in their time.”

“Whose are all these ghosts?” she said, smiling at a flustered-looking Geraldine. “Oh,” said Geraldine, “I think they might be mine...?”

“Her latest client is Professor Desmond Curnin, a university professor who teaches library sciences to large groups of students. He’s quick to pay on-time, quick to never fall behind. He’s a brown-haired man with an unkempt beard and thick-framed hipster glasses. He slides a leather briefcase stuffed with dollar bills into the open window of Geraldine’s car. “Your fly’s unzipped,” Geraldine points out, disgusted. “Who gave you a license to sell hot dogs, buddy?”

“There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all, and that's where imagination can work.”

“The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.”

“I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.”

“There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.”

“September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.”

“You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.”

“'Greedy gut' is my middle name. I love food, and I love parts.”