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Elizabeth Crane

Elizabeth Crane is the author of two novels We Only Know So Much (now a major motion picture) and The History of Great Things (Harper Perennial) and four collections of short stories: When the Messenger Is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory (Little, Brown) and You Must Be This Happy to Enter (Akashic Books), and Turf (Counterpoint). Her work has been adapted for the stage by Steppenwolf Theater and featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She is a winner of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award.


“Russell made a comment to Charlotte about how she struck him as being really kind of healthy, in an emotional way, which wasn't completely surprising -- she knew she was fairly adroit at making people think she had it going on in that way (which gets into another whole thing about whether that was really a useful trait, which in fact she was pretty sure it wasn't, considering that maybe she could actually get some help from people, if she were willing to admit she needed any).”
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“For one thing, she hadn't exactly chosen a field; although she has since childhood imagined picking up her Oscar, the category has never been determined. There was some thought that by the time she grew up they would give out Oscars for Best Novel (and that by then she would have written one), or that maybe she would just get some kind of honorary Oscar for her distinctive life observations made in everyday conversations, or the occasional letter. ”
Elizabeth Crane
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“Charlotte is the sort of person who's inclined to feel guilty imagining so much as a kiss between her and someone who's already involved, the sort of person who can't really even manage a fantasy about a movie star who might be married, much as she finds, let's say, Andy Garcia to be worth imagnining, Charlotte is the sort of person who will have to get Andy Garcia divorced, within the fantasy but having nothing to do with having met her, he has to be divorced prior to having met her in order for her to think about kissing him, and so Charlotte tends to find it easier to just fantasize about celebrities she knows are single than to go to all that trouble. ”
Elizabeth Crane
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