Brian Keene > Quotes

“Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.”
― Brian Keene

“Jesus Christ-"
"Is Not here right now," the man in black replied,"and even if he were, he could not save you.”
― Brian Keene, A Gathering of Crows

“Save it fucker. I'm gonna slit you open and gut you like a fish and pull out your insides. I'm going to show you the black stuff inside your belly, and then I'm gonna make you eat it.”
― Brian Keene, The Conqueror Worms

“We are many. Our number is greater than the stars. We are more than infinity.”
― Brian Keene, The Rising

“... When you died, you were supposed to live on in the memories of others. That's what I'd always been told. Didn't matter what you believed, which religion you subscribed to, what god you worshipped. The simple fact was that none of us knew what lay beyond. Immortality and eternal life? The only sure shot at that was the memories of those you left behind - your friends and family...”
― Brian Keene, Dead Sea

“Levi," Maria called. "Come back. We're not finished yet."
He paused
"What, Maria?"
"You asked me what I believe in? I believed in you."
He nodded his head sadly. "Yes, you did. And before you met me, you believed in nothing. But that's the thing with belief, Maria. It's easy to believe in something when it doesn't require anything from you. It's much harder, though, when the object of your belief requires something of you or asks for something you don't want to give. That's when real belief occurs.”
― Brian Keene, Ghost Walk

“Keep that hate alive in your heart, lad. It’ll warm you when nothing else will.”
― Brian Keene, King of the Bastards

“They want to control humankind through what they call selective breeding. The Nazis started it, but now the nwo are continuing it. See, the only way to control population is to first get it back down to manageable size. They're culling the herd, same way the game commission does when deer population gets out of control. That's why we've got diseases like cancer and aids. You telling me that we can put a little goddamn skateboard-looking robot on Mars and have it send pictures back, but we can't find a cure for cancer? There's a cure. You can bet on that, boys. There's a goddamn cure. They just won't release it because cancer helps cut down the population.”
― Brian Keene, A Gathering of Crows

“Maybe God is nothing more than another villain—the biggest villain of them all. Maybe”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“We're not going to make it," I said.
The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me.”
― Brian Keene, Dark Hollow

“These days, we can be whatever we want to be. The apocalypse is sort of freeing, don’t you think?”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“I mean, what’s the sense in being a hero when there’s no one left to save? Oh”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“We're all scared. Might as well be scared together.”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“When you’re writing fulltime like I am, writing to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head and food on the table, you can’t afford to have writer’s block.”
― Brian Keene, Dark Hollow

“Sometimes it whispers. If you stand too close to it, right there on the edge where the candlelight is swallowed by shadow, the darkness talks to you in a voice not its own—a voice you’ve probably heard before. A lover. A parent. A friend.”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“What a crazy way to be buried, he thought as he hunted. Get your body burned up and then poured into a box that looked like a library book, like your relatives could check you out and take you home for a couple of weeks. Would there be an overdue penalty if they were late bringing back the dead?”
― Brian Keene, The Library of the Dead

“Hopefully, we can keep the outer darkness at bay just a little bit longer.
And keep the darkness inside us at bay, as well.”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town

“In real life, the monsters are the ones abducting and killing children or flying hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers or looting our treasury and sending our kids off to fight a bullshit war just so they can line their own pockets and the pockets of their corporate buddies or eradicating our Bill of Rights in the name of national security. Those are the real monsters.”
― Brian Keene, The Girl on the Glider

“We are the Siqqusim! We have stood by, waiting to take possession, and now you are ours. Yidde-oni! Engastrimathos du aba paren tares. We are Ob and Ab and Api and Apu. Our number is greater than the stars! We are more than infinity!”
― Brian Keene, The Rising

“You see, when you get to be my age, you start to realize that life isn’t defined by years, jobs, or decisions—it’s defined by moments.”
― Brian Keene, 25 Gates of Hell

“Life is nothing more than a series of lyric snippets from Bruce Springsteen songs.”
― Brian Keene, The Girl on the Glider

“You’re living in your own song.” She”
― Brian Keene, The Library of the Dead

“You can teach an artist about the various rules and disciplines of their creative field. You can teach a writer about grammar and point-of-view and plot tropes. You can teach them to write every day and read every day. But you can’t teach them drive and you can’t teach them determination. Most of all, you can’t teach patience. An artist either has these things or they don’t. The artist who has these things will most likely achieve some degree of success.”
― Brian Keene, End of the Road

“What is best of all is beyond your reach forever; not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you—is quickly to die.”
― Brian Keene, The Rising

“Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.”
― Brian Keene, End of the Road

“Sending your child off to school for the first day is like taking your heart out of your chest and letting it walk around on its own.”
― Brian Keene, City of the Dead

“The brains left inside of his cloven skull splatter across the blacktop like some garish Rorschach painting made from oatmeal.”
― Brian Keene, The Complex

“His mother died of Alzheimer’s, and in his opinion, burning to death in a burst of clinging napalm would be preferable to that.”
― Brian Keene, The Complex

“Zombies, werewolves, vampires and ghosts are an escape from the real world because they don’t exist in the real world.”
― Brian Keene, The Girl on the Glider

“I guess that during the end of the world, people don’t have time to read. That”
― Brian Keene, Darkness on the Edge of Town