Background Image

...

A Child Blind From Birth Doesn't Even Know He's Blind Until Someone Tells Him. Even Then He Has Only The Most Academic Idea Of What Blindness Is; Only The Formerly Sighted Have A Real Grip On The Thing. Ben Hanscom Had No Sense Of Being Lonely Because He Had Never Been Anything But. If The Condition Had Been New, Or More Localized, He Might Have Understood, But Loneliness Both Encompassed His Life And Overreached It.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

A Child Blind From

Stephen King

...

A Child Blind From Birth Doesn't Even Know He's Blind Until Someone Tells Him. Even Then He Has Only The Most Academic Idea Of What Blindness Is; Only The Formerly Sighted Have A Real Grip On The Thing. Ben Hanscom Had No Sense Of Being Lonely Because He Had Never Been Anything But. If The Condition Had Been New, Or More Localized, He Might Have Understood, But Loneliness Both Encompassed His Life And Overreached It.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Stephen King

Symbolism Exists To Adorn And Enrich, Not To Create An Artificial Sense Of Profundity.

His Mother Called Such People Ignorant And Superstitious, But His Father Only Shook His Head Slowly And Puffed His Pipe And Said That Sometimes Old Stories Had A Grain Or Two Of Truth In Them And It Was Best Not To Take Chances. It Was Why, He Said, He Crossed Himself Whenever A Black Cat Crossed His Path.

A Library Card Is Good To Have, You Can Never Have Too Much Id.

On That Gray Street, With The Smell Of Industrial Smokes In The Air And The Afternoon Bleeding Away To Evening, Downtown Derry Looked Only Marginally More Charming Than A Dead Hooker In A Church Pew.

The Multiple Choices Of Possibilities Of Daily Life Are The Music We Dance To.

Multiple Choice

It's Actually Against My Religion To Laugh At Men Who Are Toting Guns.

Both Rowling And Meyer, They’re Speaking Directly To Young People. … The Real Difference Is That Jo Rowling Is A Terrific Writer And Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

I Wanted To Write A Balls-to-the-wall Supernatural Horror Story, Something I Haven't Done In A Long Time.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

And If You Are Honest About The Words Coming Out Of Your Characters' Mouths, You'll Find That You've Let Yourself In For A Fair Amount Of Criticism.

It Is Fairly Clear That Many Of The Arguments Against Proposition Testing Are Really Arguments Against Propositions Themselves.

She Did Not Know If Her Gift Came From The Lord Of Light Or Of Darkness, And Now, Finally Finding That She Didn't Care Which, She Wad Overcome With Almost Indescribable Relief, As If A Huge Weight, Long Carried, Had Slipped From Her Shoulders.

What You Don’t Know, You Can’t Tell. Or Made To Tell.

How Life Did Imitate Art Sometimes. And The Cruder The Art, The Closer The Imitation.

He Had A Massive Stroke. He Died With His Tie On. Do You Think That Could Be Our Generation's Equivalent Of That Old Saying About Dying With Your Boots On?

He Was A Romantic In His Own Harsh Way…yet He Was Also Realist Enough To Know That Some Times Love Actually Did Conquer All.

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Smoke And A Story's Just A Story

... Suicide Gets In The Air Sometimes. Like A Cold Germ.

He Had Never Been A Social Man. He Had Shunned Causes With Contempt And Disgust. They Were For Pig-simple Suckers And People With Too Much Time And Money On Their Hands.

How Does It Happen That A Writer Who's Not Even Very Good - And I Can Say That, I've Read Four Or Five Of His Books - Gets To Be In Charge Of The World's Destiny? Or Of The Entire Universe's?" If He's Not Very Good, Why Didn't You Stop At One?" Mrs. Tassenbaum Smiled. "touché. He Is Readable, I'll Give Him That - Tells A Good Story.

I Don't Want To Sound Like An Ad, A Public Service Ad On Tv, But The Fact Is If You Can Read, You Can Walk Into A Job Later On. If You Don't, Then You've Got, The Army, Iraq, I Don't Know, Something Like That. It's, It's Not As Bright. So, That's My Little Commercial For That.

I Don't Mean That Creative People Are Somehow Finer, Or More Sensitive, And Thus Have Finer, More Sensitive Nervous Breakdowns - You Can Save That Horseshit For The Sylvia Plath Worshipers. It's Just That Creative People Have Creative Breakdowns.

Now I Think All Of Us Were Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You... You Fill Me Up.

So What He Supposed To Do? Grab Bobbie's Ax And Make Like Jack Nicholson In The Shinning? He Could See It. Smash, Crash, Bash: Heeeeeeere's Gardener!

Try Any Goddam Thing You Like, No Matter How Boringly Normal Or Outrageous. If It Works, Fine. If It Doesn't, Toss It. Toss It Even If You Love It.

What Do You Really Want To Know? Am I Sorry For What I Did? There's Not A Day Goes By I Don't Feel Regret. Not Because I'm In Here, But Because You Think I Should Be. I Look Back On The Way I Was. A Young, Stupid Kid That Committed That Terrible Crime. I Want To Talk To Him. I Want To Try To Talk Some Sense To Him. Tell Him The Way Things Are. But I Can't. That Kid's Long Gone, And This Old Man Is All That's Left.

Writers Remember Everything...especially The Hurts. Strip A Writer To The Buff, Point To The Scars, And He'll Tell You The Story Of Each Small One. From The Big Ones You Get Novels. A Little Talent Is A Nice Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer, But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember The Story Of Every Scar. Art Consists Of The Persistence Of Memory.

The Boat Dipped And Swayed And Sometimes Took On Water, But It Did Not Sink; The Two Brothers Had Waterproofed It Well. I Do Not Know Where It Finally Fetched Up, If It Ever Did; Perhaps It Reached The Sea And Sails There Forever, Like A Magic Boat In A Fairytale. All I Know Is That It Was Still Afloat And Still Running On The Breast Of The Flood When It Passed The Incorporated Town Limits Of Derry, Maine, And There It Passes Out Of This Tale Forever.

Hearts Can Break. Yes, Hearts Can Break. Sometimes I Think It Would Be Better If We Died When They Did, But We Don't.

Working On A New Idea Is Kind Of Like Getting Married. Then A New Idea Comes Along And You Think, 'man, I'd Really Like To Go Out With Her.' But You Can't. At Least Not Until The Old Idea Is Finished.

Invitation To Dance- It’s A Dance. And Sometimes They Turn The Lights Off In This Ballroom. But We’ll Dance Anyway, You And I. Even In The Dark. Especially In The Dark. May I Have The Pleasure?

Guys, Gals, Now Hear This: No One Wants To Take Away Your Hunting Rifles. No One Wants To Take Away Your Shotguns. No One Wants To Take Away Your Revolvers, And No One Wants To Take Away Your Automatic Pistols, As Long As Said Pistols Hold No More Than Ten Rounds. If You Can't Kill A Home Invader (or Your Wife, Up In The Middle Of The Night To Get A Snack From The Fridge) With Ten Shots, You Need To Go Back To The Local Shooting Range.

Mister, We Deal In Lead.

The Good Folks Mostly Win, Courage Usually Triumphs Over Fear, The Family Dog Hardly Ever Contracts Rabies: These Are Things I Knew At Twenty-five, And Things I Still Know Now, At The Age Of 25 X 2. But I Know Something Else As Well: There's A Place In Most Of Us Where The Rain Is Pretty Much Constant, The Shadows Are Always Long, And The Woods Are Full Of Monsters. It Is Good To Have A Voice In Which The Terrors Of Such A Place Can Be Articulated And Its Geography Partially Described, Without Denying The Sunshine And Clarity That Fill So Much Of Our Ordinary Lives. (viii)

And The Most Terrifying Question Of All May Be Just How Much Horror The Human Mind Can Stand And Still Maintain A Wakeful, Staring, Unrelenting Sanity.

Lying In The Bed That Had Once Held Two, Lisey Thought Alone Never Felt More Lonely Than When You Woke Up And Discovered You Still Had The House To Yourself. That You And The Mice In The Walls Were The Only Ones Still Breathing.

Do You Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?...sometimes He Makes Us Live.

Pray For Rain While Digging A Well.

When Machines Fail, When Technology Fails, When The Conventional Religion Fails, People Have Got To Have Something. Even A Zombin Lurching Through The Night Can Seem Pretty Cheerful Compared To The Existential Comedy/horror Of The Ozone Layer Dissolving Under The Combined Assult Of A Million Flurocarbon Spray Cans Of Deoderant." - The Mist

Writing Is Like A Little Hole In Reality That You Can Go Through And You Can Get Out And You Can Be Someplace Else For A While.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

Anywhere In New York, Anywhere In The Country, Somewhere There's Going To Be A Coke Sign. People Identify With Coke. You Can Write A Novel About New York And People From The Country Will Read It If They Feel That You've Made Them Familiar With New York.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

We Don't Know The Days That Will Change Our Lives. Probably Just As Well.

If There's One American Belief I Hold Above All Others, It's That Those Who Would Set Themselves Up In Judgment On Matters Of What Is "right" And What Is "best" Should Be Given No Rest; That They Should Have To Defend Their Behavior Most Stringently. ... As A Nation, We've Been Through Too Many Fights To Preserve Our Rights Of Free Thought To Let Them Go Just Because Some Prude With A Highlighter Doesn't Approve Of Them

One Night When My Longing For Her Was Like A Fire Burning Out Of Control In My Heart And My Head, I Wrote Her A Letter That Just Seemed To Go On And On. I Poured Out My Whole Heart In It, Never Looking Back To See What I'd Said Because I Was Afraid Cowardice Would Make Me Stop. I Didn't Stop, And When A Voice In My Head Clamored That It Would Be Madness To Mail Such A Letter, That I Would Be Giving Her My Naked Heart To Hold In Her Hand, I Ignored It With A Child's Breathless Disregard Of The Consequences.

In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That’s What Wireman Says.

We Never Know Which Lives We Influence, Or When, Or Why.

But It's Hard For A Man To Give Up All His Pleasures, Even When They Don't Pleasure Him No More.

I Still Think That Of All The People Doing Top Fiction Today, John D. Macdonald Is The Best.he Was My Model As A Kid. If There Are People Out There That Want To Write, All You Need To Do Is Read 20 Of His Stories To Get An Idea What It Takes To Make A Story Kick Over.

As Always, The Blessed Relief Of Starting, A Feeling That Was Like Falling Into A Hole Filled With Bright Light. As Always, The Glum Knowledge That He Would Not Write As Well As He Wanted To Write. As Always The Terror Of Not Being Able To Finish, Of Accelerating Into A Brick Wall. As Always, The Marvelous Joyful Nervy Feeling Of Journey Begun.

In The Years Since, I've Discovered There's A Lot To Be Said For Boredom.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

Of All The Questions I'm Asked, The Most Difficult Is, "how Does It Feel To Be Famous?" Since I'm Not, That Question Always Catches Me With A Feeling Of Surrealism....i've Got Three Kids And I've Changed All Their Diapers, And When It's Two O'clock In The Morning And You're Changing Something That's Sort Of Special Delivery With One Eye Open And One Eye Shut You Don't Feel Famous.

By And Large... The Good's An Illusion, Little Fables Folks Tell Themselves So They Can Get Through Their Days Without Screaming Too Much.

I Do Not Aim With My Hand; He Who Aims With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Aim With My Eye. I Do Not Shoot With My Hand; He Who Shoots With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Shoot With My Mind. I Do Not Kill With My Gun; He Who Kills With His Gun Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Kill With My Heart.

You Couldn't Get Hold Of The Things You'd Done And Turn Them Right Again. Such A Power Might Be Given To The Gods, But It Was Not Given To Women And Men, And That Was Probably A Good Thing. Had It Been Otherwise, People Would Probably Die Of Old Age Still Trying To Rewrite Their Teens.

A Friend Came To Visit James Joyce One Day And Found The Great Man Sprawled Across His Writing Desk In A Posture Of Utter Despair. James, What’s Wrong?' The Friend Asked. 'is It The Work?' Joyce Indicated Assent Without Even Raising His Head To Look At His Friend. Of Course It Was The Work; Isn’t It Always? How Many Words Did You Get Today?' The Friend Pursued. Joyce (still In Despair, Still Sprawled Facedown On His Desk): 'seven.' Seven? But James… That’s Good, At Least For You.' Yes,' Joyce Said, Finally Looking Up. 'i Suppose It Is… But I Don’t Know What Order They Go In!

You Want To Remember That While You're Judging The Book, The Book Is Also Judging You.

A Child Blind From Birth Doesn't Even Know He's Blind Until Someone Tells Him. Even Then He Has Only The Most Academic Idea Of What Blindness Is; Only The Formerly Sighted Have A Real Grip On The Thing. Ben Hanscom Had No Sense Of Being Lonely Because He Had Never Been Anything But. If The Condition Had Been New, Or More Localized, He Might Have Understood, But Loneliness Both Encompassed His Life And Overreached It.

Sooner Or Later Everything You Thought You'd Left Behind Comes Around Again. For Good Or Ill, It Comes Around Again.

Sooner Or Later

One Can Often Trace The Sources Of A Brand Personality - Here It Is The Advertising, There The Pack, Somewhere Else Some Physical Element Of The Product. Of Course, The Personality Is Clearest And Strongest When All The Elements Are Consistent.

He Would Write It For The Reason He Felt That All Great Literature, Fiction And Nonfiction, Was Written: Truth Comes Out, In The End It Always Comes Out. He Would Write It Because He Felt He Had To.

You Know," King Said, "i'm Not Much Good At Telling Stories. That Sounds Like A Paradox, But It's Not; It's The Reason I Write Them Down.

Because Things Like This You Can Only Ssay Once. And You Either Get It Wrong Or Right, It's The End Either Way, Because It's Too Hard To Ever Try To Say Again.

Clear Communication Between Selves - The Surface Self And The Deep Self - Is The Enemy Of Self-doubt. It Slays Confusion.

A Cloud-congested Caul That Is Alternately Red, Orange, Vermilion, Purple. Sometimes The Clouds Break Apart In Great, Slow Rafts, Letting Through Beams Of Innocent Yellow Sunlight That Are Bitterly Nostalgic For The Summer That Has Gone By.

I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

I've Said It Before, And I'll Say It Again. When You Find Something At Which You Have Talent, You Do That Thing (what Ever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Pop Out Of Your Head.

The Sort Of Strenuous Reading And Writing Program I Advocate - Four To Six Hours A Day, Every Day - Will Not Seem Strenuous If You Really Enjoy Doing These Things And Have An Aptitude For Them.

There's A Lot Of Things People Think They Can't Do And Then Discover They Can When They Find Themselves Tight-wired.

The Workman Cut To The Left, Still Laying On His Horn, And Roared Around The Drunkenly Weaving Limousine. He Invited The Driver Of The Limo To Perform An Illegal Sex Act On Himself. To Engage In Oral Congress With Various Rodents And Birds. He Articulated His Own Proposal That All Persons Of Negro Blood Return To Their Native Continent. He Expressed His Sincere Belief In The Position The Limo Driver's Soul Would Occupy In The Afterlife. He Finished By Saying That He Believed He Had Met The Limodriver's Mother In A New Orleans House Of Prostitution.

You Discarded Most Of The Lies Along The Way But Held On To The One That Said Life Mattered.

Don't Let The Door Hitcha Where The Good Lord Splitcha.

That's The Curse Of The Reading Class. We Can Be Seduced By A Good Story Even At The Most Inopportune Moments.

Upon Being Asked By A Fan How To Become A Writer, Stephen King Replied, "write.

I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

I Like To End Stories Where The Readers Have A Little Room To Run. They Can Resolve Things As They Like In Their Own Mind.

As We Get Older, Our Fears, In Some Way, Sharpen And Become More Personal, Because We Can No Longer - Let's Say Take A Book Like "it" Or Maybe "christine," And Say These Are Make-believe Fears.

When You're Five And You Hurt, You Make A Big Noise In The World. At Ten You Whimper. But By The Time You Make Fifteen You Begin To Eat The Poisoned Apples That Grow On Your Own Inner Tree Of Pain.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Even Despair - The Sense That You Can Never Completely Put On The Page What's In Your Mind And Heart. You Can Come To The Act With Your Fists Clenched And Your Eyes Narrowed, Ready To Kick Ass And Take Down Names. You Can Come To It Because You Want A Girl To Marry You Or Because You Want To Change The World. Come To It Any Way But Lightly. Let Me Say It Again: You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

Americans Are Apocalyptic By Nature. The Reason Why Is That We've Always Had So Much, So We Live In Deadly Fear That People Are Going To Take It Away From Us.

Kindle, Isn’t It?” The Waitress Asked. “i Got One For Christmas, And I Love It. I’m Reading My Way Through All Of Jodi Picoult’s Books.” “oh, Probably Not All Of Them,” Wesley Said. “huh? Why Not?” “she’s Probably Got Another One Done Already. That’s All I Meant.” “and James Patterson’s Probably Written One Since He Got Up This Morning!” She Said, And Went Off Chortling.

You Know How It's Going To End, But Instead Of Spoiling Things, That Somehow Increases Your Fascination. It's Like Watching A Kid Run His Electric Train Faster And Faster And Waiting For It To Derail On One Of The Curves.

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. I'll Love Your Face No Matter What It Looks Like. Because It's Yours.

The Idea For A Novel Is Like A Little Tiny Fire In A Dark Night. And, One By One, The Characters Come And Stand Around It And Warm Their Hands.

If It's Ok To Register Cars And License Drivers, Why Is It Not Ok To Impose Similar Legal Responsibilities On Gun Owners?

How Many Times, Over How Many Years, Had He—a Grown Man—asked For The Mercy Of Another Chance? He Was Suddenly So Sick Of Himself, So Revolted, That He Could Have Groaned Aloud.

May You Find Your Tower, Roland, And Breach It, And May You Climb To The Top!

Remember In Elementary School You Were Told That In Case Of Fire You Have To Line Up Quietly In A Single File From Smallest To Tallest? What Is The Logic In That? What, Do Tall People Burn Slower?

We Either Learn To Accept Or We End Up Writing Letters Home With Crayons.

Fear Can Hold You Prisoner. Hope Can Set You Free.

Hairstyles Change, And Skirt Lengths, And Slang, But High School Administrations? Never.

I Can't Understand Why People Use Religion To Hurt Each Other When There's Already So Much Pain In The World.

Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

Everybody Wants To Psychoanalyze Horror. They Don't Want To Psychoanalyze A Book Like Gay Talese's "sex With Your Neighbor" [sic] Or Something Like That. It's Pretty Much Accepted That Americans Should Be Interested In Who They're Diddling And How They're Doing It.

What Can Be Done When You’re Eleven Can Often Never Be Done Again.

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Must Do Two Things Above All Others: Read A Lot And Write A Lot. There's No Way Around These Two Things That I'm Aware Of, No Shortcut.

The Unconscious Mind Writes Poetry If It's Left Alone.

I Have To Remind Myself That Some Birds Aren’t Meant To Be Caged. Their Feathers Are Just Too Bright.

He Found Himself Still With Too Many Questions And Not Enough Answers.

For A Moment Everything Was Clear, And When That Happens You See That The World Is Barely There At All. Don't We All Secretly Know This? It's A Perfectly Balanced Mechanism Of Shouts And Echoes Pretending To Be Wheels And Cogs, A Dreamclock Chiming Beneath A Mystery-glass We Call Life. Behind It? Below It And Around It? Chaos, Storms. Men With Hammers, Men With Knives, Men With Guns. Women Who Twist What They Cannot Dominate And Belittle What They Cannot Understand. A Universe Of Horror And Loss Surrounding A Single Lighted Stage Where Mortals Dance In Defiance Of The Dark.

He Began To Cry, Not Hysterically Or Screaming As People Cry When Concealed Rage With Tears, But With Continuous Sobs Who Has Just Discovered That He's Alone And Will Be For Long. He Cried Because Safety And Reason Seemed To Have Left The World. Loneliness Was A Reality, But In This Situation Madness Was Also Remotely A Possibility.

No One Can Tell What Goes On In Between The Person You Were And The Person You Become. No One Can Chart That Blue And Lonely Section Of Hell. There Are No Maps Of The Change. You Just Come Out The Other Side. Or You Don't.

No, It's Not A Very Good Story - Its Author Was Too Busy Listening To Other Voices To Listen As Closely As He Should Have To The One Coming From Inside.

Listening To Others

Mrs. Cole Was A Perfect Democrat. She Hated All Kids Equally.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane. Put More Than Two Of Us In A Room, We Pick Sides And Start Dreaming Up Reasons To Kill One Another. Why Do You Think We Invented Politics And Religion?

Every Religion Lies. Every Moral Precept Is A Delusion. Even The Stars Are A Mirage. The Truth Is Darkness, And The Only Thing That Matters Is Making A Statement Before One Enters It. Cutting The Skin Of The World And Leaving A Scar. That's All History Is, After All: Scar Tissue.

Rewrite Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

Man Has Come To Dominate The Planet Thanks To Two Essential Traits. One Is Intelligence. The Other Has Been The Absolute Willingness To Kill Anyone And Anything That Gets In His Way.

Are You Sure Self-pity Is A Luxury You Can Afford, Jack?

Once, During The Drinking Phase, Wendy Had Accused Him Of Desiring His Own Destruction But Not Possessing The Necessary Moral Fiber To Support A Full-blown Deathwish. So He Manufactured Ways In Which Other People Could Do It, Lopping A Piece At A Time Off Himself And Their Family.

If You Have Given Up Your Heart ... You Have Already Lost. A Heartless Creature Is A Loveless Creature, And A Loveless Creature Is A Beast.

Listening To It Was Like Having A Mud-slimed Piece Of Silk Drawn Lightly Back And Forth Across Her Face.

The Harder You Had To Work To Open A Package, The Less You Ended Up Caring About What Was Inside.

If You Intend To Write As Truthfully As You Can, Your Days As A Member Of Polite Society Are Numbered, Anyway... You Must Be Prepared To Do Some Serious Turning Inward Toward The Life Of The Imagination, And That Means, I'm Afraid, That Geraldo, Keith Obermann, And Jay Leno Must Go. Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

This Is Probably The Single Great Subject Of Horror Fiction: Our Need To Cope With A Mystery That Can Be Understood Only With The Aid Of A Helpful Imagination.

He Had Come To Believe That Life Was A Series Of Ironic Ambushes. - Doctor Sleep

Love Is What Moves The World, I've Always Thought...it Is The Only Thing Which Allows Men And Women To Stand In A World Where Gravity Always Seems To Want To Pull Them Down...bring Them Low...and Make Them Crawl.

You Are The Grim, Goal-oriented Ones Who Will Not Believe That The Joy Is In The Journey Rather Than The Destination No Matter How Many Times It Has Been Proven To You.

I'm A Slow Reader, But I Usually Get Through Seventy Or Eighty Books A Year, Most Fiction. I Don't Read In Order To Study The Craft; I Read Because I Like To Read

Anything With The Power To Make You Laugh Over Thirty Years Later Isn’t A Waste Of Time. I Think Something Like That Is Very Close To Immortality.

Writers Must Be Fair And Remember Even Bad Guys (most Of Them, Anyway) See Themselves As Good—they Are The Heroes Of Their Own Lives. Giving Them A Fair Chance As Characters Can Create Some Interesting Shades Of Gray—and Shades Of Gray Are Also A Part Of Life.

The Terror, Which Would Not End For Another 28 Years-if It Ever Did End-began, So Far As I Know Or Can Tell, With A Boat Made From A Sheet Of Newspaper Floating Down A Gutter Swollen With Rain.

Do You Need Someone To Make You A Paper Badge With The Word Writer On It Before You Can Believe You Are One? God I Hope Not.

...women Are Better At Keeping Secrets, But Men Are More Comfortable With Them.

Keeping Secrets

Wendy? Darling? Light, Of My Life. I'm Not Gonna Hurt Ya. I'm Just Going To Bash Your Brains In.

If I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross Out. I'm Not Proud.

The Advantage Of Horror Books Is To Take The Reader And Cut Him Out Of The Pack And Work On Him One On One. It Has Its Advantages Because The People That Are There In The Movie Theater Really Are A Mob. If You Get One Guy Alone You Can Do A More Efficient Job Of Scaring Him.

I'm Afraid Of All Kinds Of Things. I'm Afraid Of Failing At Whatever Story I'm Writing - That It Won't Come Up For Me, Or That I Won't Be Able To Finish It.

I Simply Think That There Are Things In This World That Are Relics. We Have Unsettling Remnants Of Atlantis. They Have Found Things Off Bermuda, Great Walls And Things Of That Sort. This Seems To Indicate That There Were Races And Cultures That Went Before Us. And To Me, That's An Unsettling Idea.

A Marriage Was Like A House Under Constant Construction, Each Year Seeing The Completion Of New Rooms. A First-year Marriage Was A Cottage; One That Had Gone On For Twenty-seven Years Was A Huge And Rambling Mansion. There Were Bound To Be Crannies And Storage Spaces, Most Of Them Dusty And Abandoned, Some Containing A Few Unpleasant Relics You Would Just As Soon You Hadn't Found. But That Was No Biggie. You Either Threw Those Relics Out Or Took Them To Goodwill.

That's The Day's Business. Thinking. Thinking And Isolation, Because It Doesn't Matter If You Pass The Time Of Day With Someone Or Not; In The End, You're Alone. He Seemed To Have Put In As Many Miles In His Brain As He Had With His Feet. The Thoughts Kept Coming And There Was No Way To Deny Them.

Make-up Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

I Always Felt That Organized Religion Was Just Basically A Theological Insurance Scam Where They're Saying If You Spend Time With Us, Guess What, You're Going To Live Forever, You're Going To Go To Some Other Plain Where You're Going To Be So Happy, You'll Just Be Happy All The Time, Which Is Also Kind Of A Scary Idea To Me.

As A Young Man Just Beginning To Publish Some Short Fiction In The T&a Magazines, I Was Fairly Optimistic About My Chances Of Getting Published; I Knew That I Had Some Game, As The Basketball Players Say These Days, And I Also Felt That Time Was On My Side; Sooner Or Later The Best-selling Writers Of The Sixties And Seventies Would Either Die Or Go Senile, Making Room For Newcomers Like Me.

The Look Of The Sky As The Day's Blue Blood Runs Out Of Its Cheek.

I Go Where The Story Leads. And, Sometimes, It Is A Little Bit Outrageous. And I Relish That. I Sort Of Want To Be As Much On The Edge As I Can.

The Woman Had Looked Into The Abyss And Then Walked Out Across It.

Pray For Rain All You Like, But Dig A Well As You Do It.

I Don't Ask Myself, "well, Does God Exist Or Does God Not Exist?" I Choose To Believe That God Exists, And Therefore I Can Say, "god, I Can't Do This By Myself. Help Me Not To Take A Drink Today. Help Me Not To Take A Drug Today." And That Works Fine For Me.

Everything In Moderation. And That Includes A Couple Of Beers A Day.

No Knowledge Obtained Without Risk

Not Everybody Believes In Ghosts, But I Do. Do You Know What They Are, Trisha? She Had Shaken Her Head Slowly. Men And Women Who Can't Get Over Their Past . . . That's What Ghosts Are.

I Saw Something Even More Beautiful Than A Sense Of Humor: An Appreciation For Life’s Essential Absurdity.

Even At Eleven, He Had Observed That Things Turned Out Right A Ridiculous Amount Of The Time.

Some Things It Don't Pay To Be Curious About.

I Believe These Stories Exist Because We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives: The Parent Who Punches Instead Of Kissing, The Auto Accident That Takes A Loved One, The Cancer We One Day Discover Living In Our Own Bodies. If Such Terrible Occurrences Were Acts Of Darkness, They Might Actually Be Easier To Cope With. But Instead Of Being Dark, They Have Their Own Terrible Brilliance. . . And None Shine So Bright As The Acts Of Cruelty We Sometimes Perpetrate In Our Own Families.

I Started Off Thinking Eminem Was A Flash In The Pan, A Kind Of Hip-hop Hanson Brother. How Wrong I Was. Recovery Is Sometimes Funny, Sometimes Terrible, Always Painfully Honest. The Matching Of Eminem And Rihanna On "love The Way You Lie" Is Pure Genius. "not Afraid" Is Pretty Great Too.

The Writer's Original Perception Of A Character Or Characters May Be As Erroneous As The Reader's.

Don't Ask Me Silly Questions I Won't Play Silly Games I'm Just A Simple Choo Choo Train And I'll Always Be The Same. I Only Want To Race Along Beneath The Bright Blue Sky And Be A Happy Choo Choo Train Until The Day I Die.

I Don't Spend The Day Writing. I'll Maybe Write Fresh Copy For Two Hours, And Then I'll Go Back And Revise Some Of It And Print What I Like And Then Turn It Off.

Anyway, As The Old Barrelhouse Song Says, My God, How The Money Rolled In. Norton Must Have Subscribed To The Old Puritan Notion That The Best Way To Figure Out Which Folks God Favours Is By Checking Their Bank Acounts.

Like The Man Said, A Little Hope Never Hurt Anybody

Human Beings Have Got A Lot Of Good, Noble Impulses Inside Them, And Most People Want To Be Good And Do More Good Than They Do Evil. Hell, We've Had Nuclear Weapons Now For Thirty Or Thirty-five Years And Nothing's Happened Yet. That In Itself Seems To Be A Miracle. If Reagan Pushes The Button Or Somebody Pushes The Button In Russia Or Somebody Pushes It In Costa Rica, They Can Put A Big Tombstone In Outer Space That Says, "we Gave It A Good Try." Because We Have.

He Didn’t Know If That Was Really True Or Not, But He Discovered Something Which Was Tremendously Liberating: He Didn’t Care. He Was Very Tired Of Thinking And Thinking And Still Not Knowing. He Was Also Tired Of Being Frightened, Like A Man Who Has Entered A Cave On A Lark And Now Begins To Suspect He Is Lost. Stop Thinking About It, Then. That’s The Solution.

After The 9/11 Apocalypse Happened In New York City, People, Particularly New Yorkers, Who Breathed In The Ash, Or Saw The Results Of That, Have A Tendency To Keep Seeing Echoes And Having Flashbacks To It.

I Think That's What People Most Always Do With The Stuff They Can't Make Out - Just Forget It.

Animals Don't Know As Much About Jealousy As People, But They're Not Ignorant Of It, Either.

If You Don’t Have The Time To Do Something Right, Where Are You Going To Find The Time To Fix It?

A Kid Of Your Age---any Kid---could Get Hold Of Matches If She Wanted To, Burn Up The House Or Whatever. But Not Many Do. Why Would They Want To?

" Science Is Beginning To Encroach On Every Level Of Our Volition". And To Me, That Is A Frightening Social Concept. It Doesn't Have Anything To Do With The Right To Have An Abortion Verses The Right To Life. It Has To Do With The Ability Of Science To Keep Things Alive And The Ability Of Science To Really Control Our Lives.

Give A Man Or Woman Back His Self-respect, And In Most Cases-not All, But Most-you Also Give Back That Person's Ability To Think With At Least Some Clarity.

You Could Not Turn Off Love- Even The Rather Absent, Sometimes Taken For Granted Love- The Way You'd Turn Off A Faucet. Love Ran From The Heart And The Heart Had It's Own Imperatives

All I Ask Is That You Do As Well As You Can, And Remember That, While To Write Adverbs Is Human, To Write He Said Or She Said Is Divine.

Memories Are Contrary Things; If You Quit Chasing Them And Turn Your Back, They Often Return On Their Own.

All You Imagined, No Matter How Wild It Might Seem, Was No More Than A Disguised Version Of What You Already Knew.

Say What You Mean. Say What You See. Make A Photograph, If You Can, For The Reader.

Understand Death? Sure. That Was When The Monsters Got You.

Don't Look Back, Never Look Back. How Often Do People Tell Themselves That After An Experience That Is Exceptionally Good (or Exceptionally Bad?)? Often, I Suppose. And The Advice Usually Goes Unheeded. Humans Were Built To Look Back; That's Why We Have Tat Swivel Joint In Our Necks.

Come To A Book As You Would Come To An Unexplored Land. Come Without A Map. Explore It, And Draw Your Own Map.... A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Parenting Because I'm Home. A Friend Of Mine Told Me That The Average Father Sees Each Kid An Average Of Twenty-two Minutes A Week, Which I Found Almost Unbelievable. Mine Are In My Hip Pocket All The Time. And I Like It That Way.

The Battle Between Good And Evil Is Endlessly Fascinating Because We Are Participants Every Day.

I See Things, That's All. Write Enough Stories And Every Shadow On The Floor Looks Like A Footprint; Every Line In The Dirt Like A Secret Message.

Outside, A Gusty October Breeze Was Combing Leaves From The Trees And Sending Them Across Her Backyard In Colorful Skitters.

Lover," She Whispers, And Closes Her Eyes. It Falls Upon Her. Love Is Like Dying.

It Wasn't Just Love That Held People Together. There Was Secrets, And The Price You Paid To Keep Them.

My Wife Has Told Me Since That I Was Hungover Every Mornng Until About Two In The Afternoon, And From Five Until Midnight I Was Drunk Out Of My Mind. So She Says There Was This Period Of About Three Hours When She Could Talk To Me Like A Rational Human Being.

For Every Mother Who Ever Cursed God For Her Child Dead In The Road, For Every Father Who Ever Cursed The Man Who Sent Him Away From The Factory With No Job, For Every Child Who Was Ever Born To Pain And Asked Why, This Is The Answer. Our Lives Are Like These Things I Build. Sometimes They Fall Down For A Reason, Sometimes They Fall Down For No Reason At All.

There’s Always A Choice. That’s God’s Way, Always Will Be. Your Will Is Still Free. Do As You Will. There’s No Set Of Leg-irons On You. But... This Is What God Wants Of You.

The Trust Of The Innocent Is The Liar's Most Useful Tool.

We All Float Down Here!

Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie.

There Are All Sorts Of Dream Interpretations, Freud's Being The Most Notorious, But I Have Always Believed They Served A Simple Eliminatory Function, And Not Much More - That Dreams Are The Psyche's Way Of Taking A Good Dump Every Now And Then.

For," I Said, "a Murdered Man Or Woman Dies Not In God's Time, But In Man's. He... Or She... Is Cut Short Before He... Or She... Can Atone For Sin, And So All Errors Must Be Forgiven. When You Think Of It That Way, All Murderers Are A Gateway For Heaven.

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

All Thing Serve The Beam

Description Is What Makes The Reader A Sensory Participant In The Story.

If You Don't Have Time To Read, You Don't Have The Time (or The Tools) To Write. Simple As That.

I'm Going To Be Dead For A Long Time, So I Have A Lot To Do Now.

She Can't Help It,' He Said. 'she's Got The Soul Of A Poet And The Emotional Makeup Of A Junkyard Dog.

It's Only A Little Secret, But Having A Secret Makes Me Feel Better. Like A Human Being Again.

Good Days And Long Nights To Ya, Sai.

I Work To Loud Music - Hard-rock Stuff Like Ac/dc, Guns 'n Roses, And Metallica Have Always Been Particular Favorites - But For Me The Music Is Just Another Way Of Shutting The Door.

Semi-facetiously, When People Ask Me Why I Write These Kinds Of Stories, I Simply Say That I Was Warped As A Child. And, There Is Some Truth To That.

I Have Two Amazing Things In My Life: I'm Pain-free And I'm Debt-free.

The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

Trending Author

Christopher Columbus

Category