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

Kathryn Harrison

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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. "

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" 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. "

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

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" We know the seductive alchemy of art. To transform private anguish into a narrative of truth, if not beauty; to make sense where there was none; to bring order out of chaos - these are the promises art makes. "

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

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" 'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one. "

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" I admire cool renderings of hot topics. "

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" 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

" 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

" I have at last admitted that not only was I angry with my mother, but, in fact, I wanted to destroy her as a child. And I was so concerned to be a woman who was different from my mother that I had this vast architecture of rules. "

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" 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. "

Kathryn Harrison

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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

" By the time Joan of Arc was 16 and had proclaimed herself the virgin warrior sent by God to deliver France from her enemies, the English, she had been receiving the counsel of angels for three years. "

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 power of 'Madame Bovary' stems from Flaubert's determination to render each object of his scrutiny exactly as it looks, or sounds or smells or feels or tastes. "

Kathryn Harrison

" Joan of Arc was born 600 years ago. Six centuries is a long time to continue to mark the birth of a girl who, according to her family and friends, knew little more than spinning and watching over her father's flocks. "

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

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

Kathryn Harrison

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

Kathryn Harrison