Brian Keene Quotes

Blank paper has always inspired me.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

It's real easy for me to write a lot of stories. I just go and I live through something, and I go home and write about it. It's that quick.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

I'm always inspired to write, and it's usually my own life experiences that inspire me.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

As a writer, you look for inspiration wherever you can get it.

Whether it's 'Fish' or 'Annabel Scheme' or 'The Truth About the East Wind,' I often find myself crafting custom containers to hold the kind of content I want to create.

Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.