Literary Birthday – 7 June – Daniel Kraus

Happy Birthday, Daniel Kraus, born on 7 June 1975.

Daniel Kraus Quotes

1. I love writing so much that it has been to some deficit of other life. I’ve lost time for people. I’ve got this sort of tunnel vision in a way that is really good if you want to write a lot of books, but I need other hobbies. (Salnudo)
2. My idea was that I wanted the chapter breaks to feel like gasps for air, and I wanted the reader to constantly be aware of how much air he’s losing. You know, the chapter headings are all essentially telling you how much oxygen he has left. (NPR)
3. Diversity fuels everything I do. I read broadly, watch broadly, listen broadly, and write broadly. I don’t want to leave any genre or writing style unturned. Each one of the projects I’m doing at any given time are so radically different from one another, that they act as palate cleansers to one another. There’s rarely burnout, only inspiration upon inspiration. (Friends & Fiction)
4. I’m kind of used to people looking at me like I have another head. That’s the reaction I want! All my books, in the abstract, sound impossible. That’s what I like about them. (HBook.com)
5. There’s something intrinsically disturbing about something sweet and cute being twisted into something terrifying. It feels like a betrayal of trust, in a way. (HBook.com)

Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling American writer of novels, television, and film. As of November 2025, he has published 22 books. His novel Angel Down was the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2025, and a national bestseller. His novel Whalefall received a front-cover review in the New York Times Book Review and won the Alex Award. He co-authored The Shape of Water and Trollhunters with Guillermo del Toro. He is also the author of  The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, Scribe Award, and two Odyssey Awards. Kraus’s work has been translated into over 25 languages. Follow him on Bluesky.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website, Photo by Lyndon French

by Amanda Patterson

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