Life & Wisdom Quote by Brian Lumley

There is a deliciously pragmatic cynicism in Lumley admitting he kept Crow alive not out of tenderness, but out of narrative self-interest. The line dismantles the romantic myth of the author as omnipotent god. Instead, it frames writing as a long game of consequences: one character’s survival becomes an engine that spits out six more books and nearly half a million words of momentum.

The phrase “very necessary experience” does heavy lifting. Lumley isn’t just talking about plot mileage; he’s admitting that characters can function like apprenticeships. Keeping Crow around forces the author into situations he hasn’t solved yet: moral compromises, tonal recalibrations, new forms of menace, new kinds of grief. In genre fiction especially, a recurring figure isn’t merely a mascot; they’re a pressure system. They generate weather. Killing them off would have been tidy. Keeping them means living with the mess, and the mess is where craft develops.

There’s also an economic frankness hiding in plain sight. “400,000 words’ worth” reads like a ledger entry, a sly nod to the industrial reality of series writing: readers return for continuity; publishers bankroll what’s proven. Lumley makes that transactional loop feel almost honest, even admirable. It suggests that artistic growth and commercial longevity aren’t enemies; sometimes they’re the same decision, wearing different masks.

Contextually, it’s a veteran writer looking back at a fork in the road and treating it like a craft lesson: don’t be too eager to “solve” your story with a clean death if a living character can keep teaching you how to write.