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Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they’re from books, sometimes they’re just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they’re biographical, or sometimes they’re other things [everyday life].

Brian Evenson

Sometimes I start with the mood, but sometimes I just try to work toward discovering it. But I do think often there’s a mood or unsettling quality, in which the reality of the world seems to be taken away, that I really love, and it’s something that I almost always unconsciously move toward.
BRIAN EVENSON

Discovering Mood Often Seem Sometimes World
When I say I’m instinctive [in writing], I do feel like I need to hide what I’m doing from myself. My mind just needs to be able to operate untrammeled.
BRIAN EVENSON

Hide Mind Needs Untrammeled Writing
Misreading is a big part of reading, the way in which the level of attention you’re paying can lead to some interesting residue.
BRIAN EVENSON

Attention Interesting Reading
Julio’s Day is a story of one man’s life, but it’s a great more than that as well. It’s the story of the life of a century, also told as if a day.
BRIAN EVENSON

Events Men Stories
I don’t always know what’s going to go on in terms of the mood of the story.
BRIAN EVENSON

Going Moving Story Taken Thinking
In Kamby Bolongo Mean River damage and delusion walk hand in hand, and everything we think we know is gradually called into question.
BRIAN EVENSON

Damage Mean Question Reading Thinking
I don’t think that writing, real writing, has much to do with affirming belief–if anything it causes rifts and gaps in belief which make belief more complex and more textured, more real.
BRIAN EVENSON

Affirming More Real Textured Thinking Writing
One of the primary differences for me between fiction and poetry is that fiction uses every sort of tool that poetry does but hides it much, much more. Fiction doesn’t necessarily reveal what it’s doing with rhythm and sound and patterning.
BRIAN EVENSON

Differences Fiction Pattering Sound
Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they’re from books, sometimes they’re just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they’re biographical, or sometimes they’re other things [everyday life].
BRIAN EVENSON

Air Biographical Book Ideas Sometimes
Reading like a cross between Samuel Beckett’s ‘The Calmative’ and Gordon Lish’s Dear Mr. Capote, Robert Lopez’s new novel gets under your skin and latches on.
BRIAN EVENSON

Between Cross Latches Reading
I read individual stories a lot in magazines and other places, too, but I really think there’s something to be said for reading story collections as collections. That’s not true of all story collections, to be honest, but for good ones I think it often is true.
BRIAN EVENSON

Good Honest Often Reading Thinking True
Beginning with Julio’s birth in 1900 and ending with his death in 2000, the graphic novel touches on most of the major events that shaped the 20th century.
BRIAN EVENSON

Beginning Birth Ending Event Graphix Major Novel
Two Dollar Radio deftly demonstrates why it is rapidly becoming the go-to press for innovative fiction.
BRIAN EVENSON

Demonstrate Fiction Innovative Rapidly
Like a cross between Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions and Janice Lee’s Damnation, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing is at once smart and slyly unsettling.
BRIAN EVENSON

Between Book Cross Illusion Smart Thinking

Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they’re from books, sometimes they’re just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they’re biographical, or sometimes they’re other things [everyday life].

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Popular Authors

Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they’re from books, sometimes they’re just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they’re biographical, or sometimes they’re other things [everyday life].

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Brian Evenson Quotes