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A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

-Stephen King

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A Critical Assumption Is

Stephen King

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A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

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You Can't Polish A Turd.

If You Don't Control Your Temper, Your Temper Will Control You.

The Quickest Way To Learn About A New Place Is To Know What It Dreams Of.

I Think Of Fear As A Survival Function, And In The Stories That I Write, The Only Thing That I've Tried To Do Is Provide People With Nightmares Which Are Really Safe Places To Put Those Fears For A While Because You Can Say Afterwards That Uh, That, That Well It Was All Just Make-believe Anyway, So I Just Took My Emotions For A Walk.

The One Thing About Kids Is That You Never Really Know Exactly What They're Thinking Or How They're Seeing. After Writing About Kids, Which Is A Little Bit Like Putting The Experience Under A Magnifying Glass, You Realize You Have No Idea How You Thought As A Kid. I've Come To The Conclusion That Most Of The Things That We Remember About Our Childhood Are Lies. We All Have Memories That Stand Out From When We Were Kids, But They're Really Just Snapshots. You Can't Remember How You Reacted Because Your Whole Head Is Different When You Stand Aside.

Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

Give Me Just Enough Information So That I Can Lie Convincingly.

A Man Without A Sense Of Purpose, Even One Whose Bank Accounts Are Stuffed With Money, Is Always A Small Man.

I Like To Write Short Stories More Because I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy. And A Short Story Is, By Its Very Definition, Short. It Is Something That Generally You Can Turn Out In A Week To Two Weeks Depending On How Well It Goes For You. But, At The Same Time, It Gives The Same Satisfaction Of Creating A Complete World.

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?

You Will Not Falter, Because You Will Have The Everlasting Arm Of The Lord God Of Hosts To Lean On. Yes. With God’s Help You Will Stand.

Terror. When You Come Home And Notice Everything You Own Has Been Taken Away And Replaced By An Exact Substitute. It’s When The Lights Go Out And You Feel Something Behind You-you Hear It-you Feel Its Breath Against Your Ear, But When You Turn Around There’s Nothing There.

I Can Remember Being Home From School With Tonsillitis And Writing Stories In Bed To Pass The Time.

I Changed It. I Had To. Do You Know Why?" She Studied Him, Her Eyes Grave. "because That Was Then And This Is Now. Because The Past Is Gone, Even Though It Defines The Present.

Silent White Light Filled The World. And The Righteous And Unrighteous Alike Were Consumed In That Holy Fire.

The First Draft Of A Book—even A Long One—should Take No More Than Three Months, The Length Of A Season.

I Think That Friendship Always Makes Us Feel Such Sweet Gratitude, Because The World Almost Always Seems Like A Very Hard Desert, And The Flowers That Grow There Seem To Grow Against Such High Odds.

That's Something That Is Almost Accidental At The Beginning Of A Career, But The More You Write, The More Trained You Are To Recognize The Little Signals.

The Tower. He Would Come To The Dark Tower And There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing All Their Names. The Sun Stained The East A Dusky Rose, And At Last Roland, No Longer The Last Gunslinger But One Of The Last Three, Slept And Dreamed His Angry Dreams Through Which There Ran Only That One Soothing Blue Thread: There I Will Sing All Their Names!

You Know What Talent Is? The Curse Of Expectation. As A Kid You Have To Deal With That, Beat It Somehow. If You Can Write, You Think God Put You On Earth To Blow Shakespeare Away. Or If You Can Paint, Maybe You Think--i Did--that God Put You On Earth To Blow Your Father Away.

Hapscomb's Texaco Sat On Number 93 Just North Of Arnette, A Pissant Four-street Burg About 110 Miles From Houston.

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.

Just Go On Dancing With Me Like This Forever And I'll Never Tire. We'll Scrape Our Shoe On The Stars And Hang Upside Down From The Moon.

I Realized The Shells Were Talking In A Voice I Recognized. I Should Have; It Was My Own. Had I Always Known That? I Suppose I Had. On Some Level, Unless We're Mad, I Think Most Of Us Know The Various Voices Of Our Own Imaginations. And Of Our Memories, Of Course. They Have Voices, Too. Ask Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Limb Or A Child Or A Long-cherished Dream. Ask Anyone Who Blames Himself For A Bad Decision, Usually Made In A Raw Instant (an Instant That Is Most Commonly Red). Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say

Black As Night And As Beautiful As Forever.

About Halfway Through I Broke Down Crying, Which I Hadn't Expected. I Was A Little Ashamed, But Only A Little;it Was Her, You See, And She Never Taxed Me With The Times That I Slipped From The Way I Thought A Man Should Be...the Way I Thought I Should Be, At Any Rate. A Man With A Good Wife Is The Luckiest Of God's Creatures, And One Without Must Be Among The Most Miserable, I Think, The Only True Blessing Of Their Lives That They Don't Know How Poorly Off They Are.

Oh Christ, He Groaned To Himself, If This Is The Stuff Adults Have To Think About I Never Want To Grow Up

We Need Ghost Stories Because We, In Fact, Are The Ghosts.

You Can See The Goldenrod, That Most Tenacious And Pernicious And Beauteous Of All New England Flora, Bowing Away From The Wind Like A Great And Silent Congregation.

God Doesn't Bribe, Child. He Just Makes A Sign And Lets People Take It As They Will.

Teddy, Vern, Chris: I Don't Shut Up. I Grow Up. And When I Look At You, I Throw Up. Aghhh! Gordie: And Then Your Mom Goes Around The Corner And She Licks It Up.

Rage-the Biggest, Truest Rage Of Her Adult Life-had Invaded Her Like A Fever, But It Wasn't Like Any Fever She Had Known Previously. It Circulated Like Weird Serum, Cold On The Right Side Of Her Body, Then Hot On The Left, Where Her Heart Was. It Seemed To Come Nowhere Near Her Head, Which Remained Clear.

Jk Rowling Created Seven Horcruxes. She Put A Part Of Her Soul In Every Book And Now Her Books Will Live Forever

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them.

See The Bear Of Fearsome Size! All The World's Within His Eyes. Time Grows Thin, The Past Is A Riddle; The Tower Awaits You In The Middle.

Everyone Loves Something For Nothing...even If It Costs Everything.

How Do We Remember To Remember? That's A Question I've Asked Myself Often Since My Time On Duma Key, Often In The Small Hours Of The Morning, Looking Up Into The Absence Of Light, Remembering Absent Friends. Sometimes In Those Little Hours I Think About The Horizon. You Have To Establish The Horizon. You Have To Mark The White. A Simple Enough Act, You Might Say, But Any Act That Re-makes The World Is Heroic. Or So I've Come To Believe.

My Heart's With You, Bill, No Matter How It Turns Out. My Heart Is With All Of Them, And I Think That, Even If We Forget Each Other, We'll Remember In Our Dreams.

Sure, We Need The Gypsies. We Always Have. Because If You Don't Have Someone To Run Out Of Town Once In A While, How Are You Going To Know You Yourself Belong There?

The Scariest Moment Is Always Just Before You Start.

Forced To Define 'irrational Subconscious,' I Would Say That It Is A Small Padded Room Inside All Of Us, Where The Only Furnishing Is A Small Card Table, And The Only Thing On The Card Table Is A Revolver Loaded With Flexible Bullets.

A Little Talent Is A Good Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer. But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember Every Scar.

To Me, The Greatest Thing In The World Is Downloading Tv Shows On Itunes Because There Are No Commercials, And Yet If I Were A Working Stiff, I Could Never Afford To Do This. But I Don't Even Think About Money.

This Is A Short Book Because Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit.

Ka Works And The World Moves On.

There Is A Story In The Book Night Shift, Called 'the Mangler,' About A Laundry Machine That Takes On A Sort Of Malignant Life. I Worked In A Laundry For About A Year And A Half After I Got Out Of College. It Was The Only Job I Could Find To Support My Wife And Our First Child. There Was A Fellow There That Had No Hands Or Forearms. He Simply Had Hooks. This Is One Of The Things That They Don't Tell You About When You Become Management. You Have To Wear A Tie. It Was This Fellow's Tie That Did Him In.

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.

I Am The Literary Equivalent Of A Big Mac And Fries.

Belief In The Supernatural Or Belief In Wild Talents Like Precognition And Telepathy And Telekinesis And Things Like That, It Seems To Me That Belief In Those Things Is Just Very, Very Freeing.

I Hold To No God," Roland Said. "i Hold To The Tower, And Won't Pray To That.

Do It For Joy And You Can Do It Forever

Speaking Personally, You Can Have My Gun, But You'll Take My Book When You Pry My Cold, Dead Fingers Off Of The Binding.

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

Stories Are Like Relics, Part Of An Undiscovered Preexisting World. The Writer's Job Is To Use The Tools In His Or Her Toolbox To Get As Much Of Each One Out Of The Ground Intact As Possible.

The Only Leverage The Manufacturer Can Apply To The Retailer Is His Relationship With The Consumer. And The Main Element In Profit Growth Is Going To Have To Lie In Making His Brand More Valuable To The Retailer, Through Its Being More Valuable To The Consumer. And That Means His Brand Must Be Unique, It Must Have No Adequate Direct Substitutes - Because It Is In This, After All, That Value Lies.

I Don't Want To Go To The Heaven That I Learned About When I Was A Kid. To Me, It Seems Boring.

I Don't Have Nightmares; I Give Them All To You.

Fear Is The Emotion That Makes Us Blind.

People Want To Know Why I Do This, Why I Write Such Gross Stuff. I Like To Tell Them I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy... And I Keep It In A Jar On My Desk.

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

Rightly Tired Of The Pain İ Hear And Feel, Boss... Where We's Comin From Or Goin To Or Why... If İ Could End It, İ Would. But İ Can't.

It Was How Wars Really Ended, Dieffenbaker Supposed -- Not At Truce Tables But In Cancer Wards And Office Cafeterias And Traffic Jams. Wars Died One Tiny Piece At A Time, Each Piece Something That Fell Like A Memory, Each Lost Like An Echo That Fades In Winding Hills. In The End Even War Ran Up The White Flag. Or So He Hoped. He Hoped That In The End Even War Surrendered.

Humans Were Built To Look Back; That's Why We Have That Swivel Joint In Our Necks

We Make Up Horrors To Help Us Cope With The Real Ones.

There Were No Horror Movies Or Horror Books To Speak Of In The '40s. I Picked The '50s Because That Pretty Well Spans My Life As An Appreciator - As Somebody Who's Been Involved With This Mass Cult Of Horror, From Radio And Movies And Saturday Matinees And Books. In The '40s There Really Wasn't That Much. People Don't Want To Read About Horrible Things In Horrible Times. So, In The '40s, There Was Val Lutin With The Cat People And The Curse Of The Cat People And There Wasn't Much Else.

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

No One Likes To See A Government Folder With His Name On It.

Kill Your Darlings, Kill Your Darlings, Even When It Breaks Your Egocentric Little Scribbler’s Heart, Kill Your Darlings.

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

The Low Bird Is Not Picked Tenderly Out Of The Dust By Its Fellows; Rather, It Is Dispatched Quickly And Without Mercy.

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.

As A Teenager, I Read A Lot Of H.p. Lovecraft, So I Wrote Like H.p. Lovecraft. And In My 20s, I Read A Lot Of Ross Macdonald And Raymond Chandler, So I Wrote Like Those Guys. But, Little By Little, You Develop Your Own Style.

Sometimes Life Coughs Up Coincidences No Writer Of Fiction Would Dare Copy.

When It Comes To Rock Music, I'm Not Much Of A Player, But I Do Have Entry-level Chops. I'm More Knowledgeable As A Listener, And Revival Gave Me A Way To Write About Rock And Roll Without Being Preachy Or Boring.

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

The Mind Can Calculate, But The Spirit Yearns, And The Heart Knows What The Heart Knows

But Now The Joy Is Gone And The Sadness Is Back, The Sadness Feels Like Something Deserved, The Price Of Some Not-quite-forgotten Betrayal.

If You Can Remember All The Accessories That Go With Your Best Outfit, The Contents Of Your Purse, The Starting Lineup Of The New York Yankees Or The Houston Oilers, Or What Label "hang On Sloopy" By The Mccoys Was On, You Are Capable Of Remembering The Differences Between A Gerund (verb Form Used As A Noun) And A Participle (verb Form Used As An Adjective).

Writers Are Often The Worst Judges Of What They Have Written.

The Dream Didn't Fade As Dreams Usually Do Upon Waking.

I'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami.

Lovecraft Opened The Way For Me, As He Had Done For Others Before Me

Cut Him. Cut Him While I Stand Here And Watch. I Want To See The Blood Flow. Don't Make Me Tell You Twice.

There Are Really Very Few Economies Of Scale In Centralising Or Standardising Advertising.

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.

If A Writer Knows What He Or She Is Doing, I'll Go Along For The Ride. If He Or She Doesn't... Well, I'm In My Fifties Now, And There Are A Lot Of Books Out There. I Don't Have Time To Waste With The Poorly Written Ones.

The Worst Thing You Can Try To Do Is To Steer The Story Once It Gets Going. You Just Kind Of Follow Along And See Where It Goes. That's The Fun.

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

I Thought It Was Great Fun To Scare People. I Also Knew It Was Socially Acceptable Because There Were A Lot Of Horror Movies Out There.

How Much Courage Does It Take To Fire Up Your Tractor And Plow Under A Crop You Spent Six Or Seven Years Growing? How Much Courage To Go On And Do That After You've Spent All That Time Finding Out How To Prepare The Soil And When To Plant And How Much To Water And When To Reap? How Much To Just Say, "i Have To Quit These Peas. Peas Are No Good For Me, I Better Try Corn Or Beans.

When A Good Writer Is Having Fun, The Audience Is Almost Always Having Fun Too.

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

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.

The Town Kept Its Secrets, And The Marsten House Brooded Over It Like A Ruined King.

It's How We See The World That Keeps The Darkness Beyond At Bay. Keeps It From Pouring Through And Devouring Us. I Think All Of Us Might Know That, Way Down Deep.

Amateurs Sit And Wait For Inspiration, The Rest Of Us Just Get Up And Go To Work.

Procrastination

Books Are The Perfect Entertainment: No Commercials, No Batteries, Hours Of Enjoyment For Each Dollar Spent. What I Wonder Is Why Everybody Doesn't Carry A Book Around For Those Inevitable Dead Spots In Life.

Let The Word And The Legend Go Before You. Let The World Go Before You. Let Your Shadow Grow. Let It Grow Hair On Its Face. Let It Become Dark. Given Time, Words May Even Enchant An Enchanter.

A Product Can Be Quickly Outdated, But A Successful Brand Is Timeless.

It's Hard To Make Strangers Care About The Good Things In Your Life.

People Seem To Think There's A Magic Formula To Writing, I Just Write 1 Word At A Time.

I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

Life Is A Wheel, And If You Wait Long Enough, It Always Comes Back Around To Where It Started.

The Kids Accepted My Drinking As A Part Of Life. Not A Particularly Pernicious Part. I Didn't Beat Up On Them. Basically I Don't Think I Was So Different From A Lot Of Dads Who Have Three Or Four Martinis When They Get In From Work, Wine With Dinner And So On.

I Had A Period Where I Thought I Might Not Be Good Enough To Publish.

Directing Teenage Actors Is Like Juggling Jars Of Nitro-glycerine: Exhilarating And Dangerous.

It's Dialogue That Gives Your Cast Their Voices, And Is Crucial In Defining Their Characters.

A Little Arrogance (or Even A Lot) Isn't Such A Bad Thing, Although Your Mother Undoubtedly Told You Different. Mine Did. "pride Goeth Before A Fall, Stephen", She Said... And Then I Found Out - Right Around The Age That Is 19 X 2 - That Eventually You Fall Down, Anyway.

I Have Grown Into A Bestsellasaurus Rex - A Big, Stumbling Book-beast That Is Loved When It Shits Money And Hated When It Tramples Houses... I Started Out As A Storyteller; Along The Way I Became An Economic Force.

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 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.

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.

Whenever I Publish A Book, I Feel Like A Trapper Caught By The Iroquois. They're All Lined Up With Tomahawks, And The Idea Is To Run Through With Your Head Down, And Everybody Gets To Take A Swing. They Hit You In The Head, The Back, The Ass, And The Balls.

The Simple Truth Of Things Is That Bad Dreams Are Far Better Than Bad Wakings.

Disney Cartoons Are All Rated G. It's Really Funny. There Are Kids All Over The World Who Still Have Complexes Over Bambi's Father Getting Shot By The Hunter And Bambi's Mother Getting Crisped. But That's The Way It's Always Been. This Is The Sort Of Material That Appeals To Kids. Kids Understand It Instinctively. They Grip It.

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

I Wouldn't Have Missed A Single Minute Of It, Not For The Whole World.

Time Heals All Wounds.

Fools Are The Only Folk On The Earth Who Can Absolutely Count On Getting What They Deserve.

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.

Of Course When You Were Running With The Bottom Dogs, What You Mostly Saw Were Paws, Claws, And Assholes.

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.

He Supposed That Even In Hell, People Got An Occasional Sip Of Water, If Only So They Could Appreciate The Full Horror Of Unrequited Thirst When It Set In Again.

People Think That I Must Be A Very Strange Person. This Is Not Correct. I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy. It Is In A Glass Jar On My Desk.

In Many Cases When A Reader Puts A Story Aside Because It 'got Boring,' The Boredom Arose Because The Writer Grew Enchanted With His Powers Of Description And Lost Sight Of His Priority, Which Is To Keep The Ball Rolling.

...stupidity Is One Of The Two Things We See Most Clearly In Retrospect. The Other Is Missed Chances.

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.

The World Had Teeth And It Could Bite You With Them Anytime It Wanted.

It's A Long Way Back To Eden, Sweetheart, So Don't Sweat The Small Stuff.

I Think Uncertainty Is Good For Things. Certainty Breeds Complacency And Complacency Means That You Just Sit Somewhere In Your Nice Little Comfortable Suburban House In Michigan, Looking At Cnn And Saying, "oh, Those Poor Immigrant Children That Are All Coming Across The Border. But We Really Can't Have Them Here - That Isn't What God Wants. Let's Send Them All Back To The Drug Cartels." There's A Complacency To It.

Things Were Going Very Fast Now. Too Fast To Suit Him. Fantasy And Reality Had Merged.

Fantasy And Reality

He's A Very Nice Man And All That, Easy To Get Along With, Fun, He Never Makes Me Cry. But Is That Love? I Mean, Is That All There Is To It? Even When You Learned To Ride Your Two-wheeler, You Had To Fall Off A Few Times And Scrape Both Knees. Call It A Rite Of Passage. And That Was Just A Little Thing.

It's Exciting And It's Thrilling And It's Not Particularly Threatening, Because They're Not Overtly Sexual. A Lot Of The Physical Side Of It Is Conveyed In Things Like The Vampire Will Touch Her Forearm Or Run A Hand Over Skin, And She Just Flushes All Hot And Cold. And For Girls, That's A Shorthand For All The Feelings That They're Not Ready To Deal With Yet.

...book-buyers Aren't Attracted, By And Large, By The Literary Merits Of A Novel: Book-buyers Want A Good Story...something That Will First Fascinate Them, Then Pull Them In And Keep Them Turning The Pages.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

Roland Had Taught Him That Self-deception Was Nothing But Pride In Disguise, An Indulgence To Be Denied.

When Asked, 'how Do You Write?' I Invariably Answer, 'one Word At A Time.'

Life's Simplest Answers Are Often The Easiest To Overlook.

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.

I Never Saw Any Of My Dad's Stories. My Mother Said He Had Piles And Piles Of Manuscripts.

Most Gothics Are Overplotted Novels Whose Success Or Failure Hinges On The Author's Ability To Make You Believe In The Characters And Partake Of The Mood.

They Were Nice Enough People And All, But There Wasn't Much Love In Them. Because They Were Too Busy Being Afraid. Love Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where There Was Only Fear, Just As Plants Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where It Was Always Dark.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

If Being A Kid Is About Learning How To Live, Then Being A Grown-up Is About Learning How To Die.

He Smiles A Lot. But I Think There Might Be Worms Inside Him Making Him Smile.

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.

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.

Dead Fields Under A November Sky, Scattered Rose Petals Brown And Turning Up At The Edges, Empty Pools Scummed With Algae, Rot, Decomposition, Dust.

The Age Of The Book Is Not Over. No Way... But Maybe The Age Of Some Books Is Over. People Say To Me Sometimes 'steve, Are You Ever Going To Write A Straight Novel, A Serious Novel' And By That They Mean A Novel About College Professors Who Are Having Impotence Problems Or Something Like That. And I Have To Say Those Things Just Don't Interest Me. Why? I Don't Know. But It Took Me About Twenty Years To Get Over That Question, And Not Be Kind Of Ashamed About What I Do, Of The Books I Write.

When You Stack Up All The Years We Are Allowed Against All There Is To Read, Time Is Very Short Indeed.

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

Women's Lib, Frannie Had Decided, Was Nothing More Nor Less Than An Outgrowth Of The Technological Society. Women Were At The Mercy Of Their Bodies. They Were Smaller. They Tended To Be Weaker. A Man Couldn't Get With Child, But A Woman Could---every Four-year-old Knows It. And A Pregnant Woman Is A Vulnerable Human Being. Civilization Had Provided An Umbrella Of Sanity That Both Sexes Could Stand Beneath.

It's Better To Be Good Than Evil, But One Achieves Goodness At A Terrific Cost.

If You Intend To Write As Truthfully As You Can, Your Days As A Member Of Polite Society Are Numbered.

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

Do Any Men Grow Up Or Do They Only Come Of Age?

It Always Comes Down To Just Two Choices. Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying.

I Think What You Do Is, You Keep Your Sensors Open. And It's - The More That You Do The Job, The More You Come To Understand In A Kind Of Intuitive Way That You're Always - You Know, Your Radar Is On. And The Thing Is Going Around And Around And Around. And It's Not Picking Up Any Blips.

First Comes Smiles, Then Lies. Last Is Gunfire.-roland Deschain, Of Gilead

Alone. Yes, That's The Key Word, The Most Awful Word In The English Tongue. Murder Doesn't Hold A Candle To It And Hell Is Only A Poor Synonym.

When You Own A Piano, It's Harder To Think About Moving.

...maybe The World Needs A Cadre Of Smartasses To Liven Things Up, Who Knows?

The First Thing Was To Get Down To Addie Richardson's Henhouse, And That Was A Goodish Way, Four Or Five Miles. She Found Herself Wondering If The Lord Was Going To Send Her An Eagle To Fly Her Those Four Miles, Or Send Elijah In His Fiery Chariot To Give Her A Lift. Blasphemy," She Told Herself Complacently. "the Lord Provides Strength, Not Taxicabs.

There Are, Occasionally, Writers Who Are Able To Combine Both Story And Style. They Are, Of Course, The Best. You Get A Spectacular View And You Also Get To Look At It From The Backseat Of A Chauffeur-driven Cadillac. In The Field Of Fantasy, Those Writers Able To Combine Story-as-narration With Story-as-style Are Even Rarer. But There Are A Few...the Late Theodore Sturgeon, The Early Ray Bradbury...and Richard Christian Matheson. A Brilliant Chip Off The Old Block.

The Person Healed Has An Obligation To Then Ask Why— To Meditate On God's Will, And The Extraordinary Lengths To Which God Has Gone To Realize His Will.

No One Ever Does Live Happily Ever After, But We Leave The Children To Find That Out For Themselves.

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.

Friends Don’t Spy; True Friendship Is About Privacy, Too.

True Friendship

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.

When We Blew The First Atomic Bomb At White Sands Near The End Of The War, Nobody Knew What Was Going To Happen. There Was A Theory That The Chain Reaction Would Continue Forever. And We Would Have Created A Little Tiny Sun Out There In The Desert That Would Burn Until The End Of The Universe. It Wasn't A Widely Held Theory But It Was A Theory That Nobody Had A Way Of Disproving. There Were People Who Thought It Wouldn't Go Off At All, That It Would Simply Sit Out There And Melt And Produce A Great Big Dirty Cloud Of Radioactivity. Nobody Knew.

I And Everyone Else In This World Live In What Is Probably The Most Difficult Times That Have Ever Been. We Are Facing Total Thermonuclear Destruction; And, If You Can Make Someone Believe In A Ghost Or A Demon Or A Vampire In The Face Of That, You Are Doing Well. From My Own Personal Point Of View, I Don't Think Just Blood And Guts Is Enough. At Least, It Isn't For Me. Maybe It Will Turn Someone's Stomach; But, I'm Not Sure That Is Literature Or Even Entertainment.

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!

Outside, Daylight Was Bleeding Slowly Toward Dusk.

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

Until That Afternoon In October Four Years Ago, I Hadn't Known Dogs Could Scream.

But In High School The Business Of Irrevocable Choices Began. Doors Slipped Shut With A Faint Locking Click That Was Only Heared Clearly In The Dreams Of Later Years.

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

His Name Is Legion. He Is The King Of Nowhere.

Writing's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

Death, But Not For You, Gunslinger. Never For You. You Darkle. You Tinct. May I Be Brutally Frank? You Go On.

In Both Writing And Sleeping, We Learn To Be Physically Still At The Same Time We Are Encouraging Our Minds To Unlock From The Humdrum Rational Thinking Of Our Daytime Lives.

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

He Had Been (thinking? Praying?) It Was All The Same Thing.

I Know Your Mother Lives In Your Head - Almost Everyone's Mother Does, I Guess - But You Can't Let Her Have Her Way On This One

It Would Perhaps Not Be Amiss To Point Out That He Had Always Tried To Be A Good Dog. He Had Tried To Do All The Things His Man And His Woman, And Most Of All His Boy, Had Asked Or Expected Of Him. He Would Have Died For Them, If That Had Been Required. He Had Never Wanted To Kill Anybody. He Had Been Struck By Something, Possibly Destiny, Or Fate, Or Only A Degenerative Nerve Disease Called Rabies. Free Will Was Not A Factor.

They Walked Back Into The World Together, Wearing The Gift That Had Been Given Them: Just Life. Pity Was Not Love, Barbie Reflected...but If You Were A Child, Giving Clothes To Someone Who Was Naked Had To Be A Step In The Right Direction.

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

American Grammar Doesn't Have The Sturdiness Of British Grammar, But It Has Its Own Scruffy Charm.

The Late Afternoon Sunlight, Warm As Oil, Sweet As Childhood.

There Were Times . . . When It Occurred To Me That I Was Repeating My Mother's Life. Usually This Thought Struck Me As Funny. But If I Happened To Be Tired, Or If There Were Extra Bills To Pay And No Money To Pay Them With, It Seemed Awful. I'd Think 'this Isn't The Way Our Lives Are Supposed To Be Going.' Then I'd Think 'half The World Has The Same Idea.

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

The World Was The Overlook Hotel, Where The Party Never Ended. Where The Dead Were Alive Forever.

I Don't Like The Idea That I Am Going To Come Back As An Ant Or A Sparrow If I Don't Get Along In The Great Karma Of Life.

Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

Nobody Likes A Clown At Midnight

I Understand From My Own Work That Haste Makes Waste. But I Also Understand That ... The Creative Spark Dims, And Then Death Puts It Out. William Shakespeare, For Instance, Hasn’t Produced A New Play For 400 Years. That, My Friends, Is A Long Dry Spell.

Haste Makes Waste

He Remembered Waking Up Once, Listening To The Wind, Thinking Of All The Dark And Rushing Cold Outside And All The Warmth Of This Bed, Filled With Their Peaceful Heat Under Two Quilts, And Wishing It Could Be Like This Forever.

Time Apparently Did Nothing But Blunt Grief’s Sharpest Edge So That It Hacked Rather Than Sliced.

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