Brian Hodge Quotes & Sayings

Let me see what I can come up with,' she said, and seemed to take a new satisfaction in it now. Something wrong to do, a law to break, and if she was lucky she might even get to steal, and it must have been then that everything changed between us and each of us didn't just have a neighbor to pass the time with but the closest thing either of us could find to a friend. ("Just Outside Our Windows, Deep Inside Our Walls") — Brian Hodge

I'm the type of person who always has to be making something. — Brian Hodge

I wrote my first story in second grade, and was trying novel-length by sixth. — Brian Hodge

It's got you thinking - you've never really known anyone who's died of natural causes, have you? Parents and grandparents, plus friends and neighbors and casual lovers, they've all left you too early, and in such ghastly ways. Cancers and violence, accidents and congenital defects, aneurysms of the brain and psyche. You've heard of people who've slipped peacefully away in their sleep, or in their favorite easy chairs, after ripe octogenarian lives, but suspect they must be mythical, in the company of unicorns and mermaids. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a deliberate methodology behind it all, a gradual pattern of calamity spiraling inward until, at last, you're the only one left to be dealt with. You could be expected to think that, but don't, because you still keep your wits about you, thank god - So to speak. — Brian Hodge

Without wonder, there's no progress. Nothing gets done, nobody goes anywhere. If you don't exercise your capacity for wonder ... well, use it or lose it. A civilization without wonder is a civilization that's starting to atrophy and die. — Brian Hodge

Sometimes we sleep because we want to, sometimes because we need it, and sometimes we sleep in self-defense. — Brian Hodge

One of my favorite things to do within horror is explore this feeling that a lot of people seem to have from time to time, of there being currents of another reality running beneath, or alongside, what we see and interact with every day. — Brian Hodge

A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list. — Brian Hodge

Of all the things I'd imagined in nightmares and dreams of dead things, the woman who gripped my leg was the worst and my last. — Brian Hodge

My first crime novel, "Wild Horses," sold at auction, and that changed my life at an ideal time. — Brian Hodge

So, not at first, but I eventually realized I was seeing this level of reality that's going on right over our heads and most people have no idea it's even there. I realized I was seeing the night sky as our ancestors did, and that by losing it, we'd lost our everyday touch with our place in the cosmos. — Brian Hodge

Writing for publication is an art, a craft, and a business, so you need to develop skill sets in multiple areas. You need to learn how to be a marketer just as much as you need to get past your influences and develop your unique prose voice. And you can't do it alone. You need a strong emotional support system to help cope with the frustrations and setbacks. — Brian Hodge

For the first time she realized she'd spent so much time mourning a world that had ended ages ago, hoping to resurrect it, that she'd never paid attention to what it was becoming. Or returning to again, now that it was unfettered. Where were the centaurs, she might have asked instead. Where were the gorgons, the furies, the giants and the gods? — Brian Hodge

Nothing can play havoc with your sense of scale better than looking deeply into the night skies. It can leave you feeling immense and privileged one minute, minuscule and insignificant the next. — Brian Hodge

Some dreams never leave you, because they're more than just dreams. They're truth, distilled to purest potency. — Brian Hodge