Brian Evenson > Quotes

“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.”
― Brian Evenson, Fugue State

“Truth cannot be imparted," said Kline. "It must be inflicted.”
― Brian Evenson

“Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it?”
― Brian Evenson, Fugue State

“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. Good writing unsettles, destroys both the author and the reader. From my perspective, there always has to be a tension between the writer and the monolithic elements of the culture, such as religion.”
― Brian Evenson

“Curiosity is a terrible thing, he was thinking. How is it possible to stop oneself from needing to know?”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“That’s Kline,” he said. “We know and love him. He’s like a person to us.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“Every time you think you have the world figured, trust me, that’s just when the world’s got you figured and is about to spring and break your back”
― Brian Evenson, A Collapse of Horses

“But I opened up each pale eye within me and inquired until I found enough to tell me to rummage some more, and then I tried to close all the eyes again at once, to seal each back—for their own good, for their safety. Each was already crisscrossed with darkness and scars and damage, and awakening them seemed only to damage them worse, so better to keep them asleep.”
― Brian Evenson, The Warren: A Novel

“But this is not that kind of story, the kind meant to explain things. It simply tells things as they are, and as you know there is no explanation for how things are, at least none that would make any difference and allow them to be something else.”
― Brian Evenson, Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories

“Still,” said Ramse. “You’re not much. You’re what you are and we love you for it, but you’re not much.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“Of course there’s another choice, he thought. There is always another choice. I’m just not going to take it.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“What was the truth? he wondered. How important was it to know? And once he knew, what then?”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“Fiction is a set of observable manifestations, as represented and frozen in language, that triggers a profoundly subjective and individual experience.

Ultimately, this is the kind of productive dilemma that can allow fiction to get to places that other media does not. Fiction is exceptionally good at providing models for consciousness, and at putting readers in a position to take upon themselves the structure of another consciousness for a short while. It is better at this than any other genre or media, and can do it in any number of modes (realistic or metafictional, reliably or unreliably, representationally or metafictionally, etc.). But for it to be able to do this as well as it possibly can, it must clear a space. This is where, for me, doing without becomes most crucial.

The subtractions that we find in innovative fictions (even when those subtractions, as in Joyce's work, are followed by further ornamentations and encrustations) are there to facilitate the simulation of consciousness. What is subtracted is the significance and meaning designed to let us classify an experience without entering into it. Doing without such things opens the door wider for experience, putting the reader in a position where they are experiencing fiction in lieu of understanding it.

By paying more attention to what we leave out than to how readers are going to interpret or work after the fact, we refuse to let fiction be assimilable, digestible, and safe. We keep it from being mere fodder for criticism and instead accept it as valid, vital experience.”
― Brian Evenson

“The world is a strange place, thought Haupt, alone in the dark, almost unbearably so. And yet, it is the only place I have. And I'm not even entirely sure I have it. ”
― Brian Evenson, Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories

“There has, I fear, developed the worst of needs, the need to know, coupled reluctantly with an awareness that I probably will, in fact, never know.”
― Brian Evenson, Windeye: Stories

“As long as you are following God’s will, friend Kline. But even God sometimes becomes impatient. You know the story of Jonah, friend Kline? How many whales do you suppose God will deign send to swallow you? When does God run out of whales?”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“How much weirder, thought Kline, is it possible for my life to get? And then he pushed the thought down and tried to ignore it, afraid of what the answer might be.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“Mr Kline," the voice said.
"Would you mind putting Mlinko on?"
"Mlinko seems to be dead," said Kline.
"Appears or is?"
"Both," said Kline”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“They drove, the city slowly dissolving around them and breaking up into fields and trees.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“He found the slot that people thought best suited him and he crammed himself into it. He grew up.”
― Brian Evenson, A Collapse of Horses

“At times, I become confused about the order in which things should be told. Parts of me know things that other parts do not, and sometimes I both know a thing and do not know it, or part of me knows something is true and another part knows it is not true, and there is nothing to allow me to negotiate between the two.”
― Brian Evenson, The Warren

“I am your friend,” Gous said. “I drank with you, didn’t I?”
Kline tried to nod but nothing happened. He could see the wrappings around Gous’ hand staining with blood.
“Besides,” said Gous, “friendship is one thing, God another.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“People clustered in twos or threes or fours, I have come to believe, both constitute creatures in and of themselves and, together as tandems or triunes or packs, form another sort of myriad-minded creature whose actions are far from predictable.”
― Brian Evenson

“Kline felt his limbs grow suddenly heavy, the missing limb most of all.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“Hell is crammed full of godly men.”
― Brian Evenson, Father of Lies

“Mr. Kline, surely you’re enough of an armchair philosopher to realize that everything is a reconstruction of something else? Reality is a desperate and evasive creature.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“And there's another one, where you look yourself in the mirror and keep looking until you can see through your skin, and then you draw your own heart and send the drawing in a letter to someone else."

"Why would you do that?" I couldn't stop myself from saying.

"So that they can control you," she said. "You are saying, 'I do not want myself and so I am giving you the gift of me.' Or something like that."

"It's very strange here," I said.”
― Brian Evenson, Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories

“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.”
― Brian Evenson, Fugue State

“With every disaster, I have come to believe for my own personal reasons, comes a compensation, a certain balancing of the accounts - not spread evenly about but clumped here and there, of benefit to very few.”
― Brian Evenson, Fugue State

“His only mistake was not realizing there was a second car. There’s always a second car. Except when there’s not.”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days