Karen Russell said this quote

There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives.

~ Karen Russell

I dropped the candies into the children's bags, thinking: You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

~ Karen Russell

Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.

~ Karen Russell

Even if she’d [Ossie] gotten away from him [her ghost fiancé] the prognostications were grim—alligators with unusual pigmentation can’t camouflage themselves in the dust-and-olive palette of the swamp. Their skin is spotlit for predators. That’s why you don’t see albino Seths [Ava’s pet name for alligators] in the wild. Once an alligator reaches a size of four feet its only real predator is man.

~ Karen Russell