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" I admire writers who succeed at what I consider the first demand of art: that the artist vivisect himself without pity, without hesitation, determined to reveal whatever he might find. "

Kathryn Harrison

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I don't care what people think about me. I care what people think about my work. As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. "

" Looking at the Obamas, they have a lot to manage with their children and having Michelle go out and have everybody comment on what she was wearing, what it means. I think you have to create a pretty large private world to live in. "

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

" I love any book that makes my family seem almost normal. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I admire cool renderings of hot topics. "

" 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

Writing

Myself

" It is my conviction that secrets are more costly in the long run than honesty. "

Kathryn Harrison

Than

Secrets

" I remember seeing my father only twice as a child for brief visits. As I grew up, I invented a father who was larger than life - stronger, smarter, more handsome, and even holier than other men. "

" Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary. "

" Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting. "

Kathryn Harrison

Life

Kind

" 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. "

" I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives. "

" How many artists subscribe to the notion that creative success depends on input from the fickle muse or her modern avatar, mental illness? Probably very few. "

" 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

Never

People

" Like all holy figures whose earthly existence separates them from the broad mass of humanity, a saint is a story, and Joan of Arc's is like no other. "

Kathryn Harrison

Other

Story

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

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

" I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "