Quotes by Caitlín R. Kiernan

And it means snapshots, because thats what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. Im rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, Im even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but its a falsehood Ive never learned to spin.

The divine is always abominable.Houses Under The Sea

You know, its a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic.

It is not the task of a writer to tell all, or even to decide what to leave in, but to decide what to leave out. Whatever remains, that meager sum of this profane division, thats the bastard chimera we call a story. I am not building, but cutting away. And all stories, whether advertised as truth or admitted falsehoods, are fictions, cleft from the objective facts by the aforementioned action of cutting away. A pound of flesh. A pile of sawdust. Discarded chips of Carrara marble. And whats left over.Houses Under The Sea

You think ones any different from the next? I mean, when it comes right down to brass tacks, people killing each other since they figured out how, thats all. Give them pretty names and numbers, but its all the same to the worms.

That would be showing him a part of her soul, a part of her mind, that shes never risked showing anyone. The raw and squirming part that indifferent high-school counselor were always prying at, the part therapists tried to trick her into showing them for free, the part her parents hated her for. The light and the darkness behind her eyes. The soft places.

I think I might have something for you today, he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked.

I loved this place when I was a kid. I still love it, but when I was a kid Id take the bus down here and spend all day long reading in this room.

I dont like remembering the way that hurt her. Hurts her. Im sure it still does; Im just not around to see, and I dont like dwelling on that, either. Thats only normal. Missing people you still love, and not wanting to see them in pain and angry and humiliated.

Dancy closes her eyes, remembering all the times that have been so much worse than this, all the horror and shame and sorrow to give her strength. The burning parts of her no one and nothing can ever touch, the fire where her soul used to be.

Listen: Love your fiction, even if you hate the act of creating that fiction, love the stories to a fault. Cry at your tragedies, laugh at your jokes, rejoice at your characters victories — or give it all up and go knit a damned sweater, instead.

Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and youll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst.

In the end, its only a story of having had her words and secrets, her confidences, turned against her by someone she once believed entirely beyond any acts of betrayal. A story of pettiness and cruelty and of the lies friends will tell when a friendship has ceased to be profitable or convenient. It is a very simple and inexpressibly complex story of cowardice...

I began keeping diaries after they locked Rosemary up at Butler and I went to live with Aunt Elaine in Cranston until I was eighteen, but even the diaries cant be trusted. For instance, theres a series of entries describing a trip to New Brunswick that Im pretty sure I never took. It used to scare me, those recollections of things that never took place, but Ive gotten used to it.

After Abalyn said what she said, I panicked. Someone tells me I cant remember what I definitely do remember, and sometimes I panic. Im not as used to it as I often pretend. As I pretend to be used to it, I mean to say. The false memories.

Assassination is almost always unthinkable to moral, thinking men until after a holocaust has come and gone.

Making a story from the messy thoughts and half-thoughts in her head, building a world and lives and taking them apart again, fitting the pieces together another way until it feels right, as right as she can make it feel.

You could have kept on driving and never looked back. No ones ever had to stop for me. Or even hear me. Anyway, you did, and now Im afraid the time for choice is behind us both.

Thats another sort of being haunted: starting something and never finishing it.

I dont judge a scene or a line of dialog by whether or not it advances the plot, for example. Imagine an edit of Tarantinos Pulp Fiction wherein only dialog that advances the plot was allowed to remain. I dont obsess over the balance of conflict and interaction. I dont generally fret over the possibility that something I do may cause some reader to experience a disconnect (what an odious metaphor). I dont think in dramatic arcs. I dont spend a lot of time wondering if the plot is getting lost in description and conversation. To me, this all seems like a wealth of tedious confusion being introduced into an act that ought to be instinctive, natural, intuitive. I want to say, stop thinking about all that stuff and just write the story you have to tell. Let the story show you how it needs you to write it. I dont try to imagine how the reader will react to X or if maybe A, B, and C should have happened by page R. Its not that I dont want the story to be read. I desire readers as much as anyone. But I desire readers who want to read what Im writing, not readers who approach fiction with so many expectations that theyre constantly second-guessing and critiquing the authors every move, book in one hand, some workshop checklist in the other, and a stopwatch on the desk before them. If writing or reading like this seems to work for you, fine. I mean, Ive always said that when you find something that works, stick with it. But, for me, it seems as though such an anal approach to creating any art would bleed from it any spark of enjoyment on the part of the artist (not to mention the audience). It also feels like an attempt to side-step the nasty issue of talent, as if we can all write equally well if we only follow the rules, because, you know, good writing is really 99% craft, not inexplicable, inconvenient, unquantifiable talent.