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A Thousand Recollected Lives Were Passing Through Her, A Thousand Stories - Of Love And Work, Of Parents And Children, Of Duty And Joy And Grief. Beds Slept In And Meals Eaten, And The Bliss And Pain Of The Body, And A View Of Summer Leaves From A Window On A Morning It Had Rained; The Nights Of Loneliness And The Nights Of Love, The Soul In It's Body Keeping Always Longing To Be Known.

-Justin Cronin

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A Thousand Recollected Lives

Justin Cronin

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A Thousand Recollected Lives Were Passing Through Her, A Thousand Stories - Of Love And Work, Of Parents And Children, Of Duty And Joy And Grief. Beds Slept In And Meals Eaten, And The Bliss And Pain Of The Body, And A View Of Summer Leaves From A Window On A Morning It Had Rained; The Nights Of Loneliness And The Nights Of Love, The Soul In It's Body Keeping Always Longing To Be Known.

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In Her Mind's Eye She Saw It, Saw It All At Last: The Rolling Armies And The Flames Of Battle; The Graves And Pits And Dying Cries Of A Hundred Million Souls; The Spreading Darkness, Like A Black Wing Stretching Over The Earth; The Last, Bitter Hours Of Cruelty And Sorrow, And The Terrible, Final Flights; Death's Great Dominion Over All, And, At The Last, Empty Cities, Becalmed By The Silence Of A Hundred Years. Already These Things Were Coming To Pass.

We Live, We Die. Somewhere Along The Way, If We're Lucky, We May Find Someone To Help Lighten The Load.

One Of The Great Themes In American Literature Is The Individual's Confrontation With The Vast Open Spaces Of The Continent.

It Was What You Did, Wolgast Understood; You Started To Tell A Story About Who You Were, And Soon Enough The Lies Were All You Had And You Became That Person.

One Of The Traps Or The Pitfalls Of Writing A Trilogy - Or A Triptych, Or Whatever Term You Want To Use - Is That The Second Book Can Be A Long Second Act To Get You From Book One To Book Three, Which Borrows All Of Its Energy From The First Book.

It Happened Fast. Thirty-two Minutes For One World To Die, Another To Be Born.

And I Had Always Liked Vampire Stories Because They Are Great Material That Can Be Refashioned In Lots Of Ways.

My Rule Has Always Been, Write The Next Part Of The Book That You Seem To Know Well. So I Won't Necessarily Write Chapter Two After Chapter One.

Choosing Writing As A Career, Just By Itself, Is A Measure Of Not Being A Calculating Person.

On A Fading Summer Evening, Late In The Last Hours Of His Old Life, Peter Jaxon-son Of Demetrius And Prudence Jaxon, First Family; Descendent Of Terrence Jaxon, Signatory Of The One Law; Great-great-nephew Of The One Known As Auntie, Last Of The First; Peter Of Souls, The Man Of Days And The One Who Stood-took His Position On The Catwalk Above Main Gate, Waiting To Kill His Brother.

I'm Still An English Professor At Rice University Here In Houston. They've Been Very Generous In Letting Me On A Very Long Leash To Just Work On 'the Passage' And Its Sequels.

What Strange Places Our Lives Can Carry Us To, What Dark Passages.

Every Book Has Got Its Challenges. You Run Into A Plot Point That You Can't Figure Out, Or A Scene That You Struggle To Write And Have To Write 50 Times.

Writers Who Pretend That Everything They're Doing Is Completely New Are Full Of It.

Real Courage Is Doing The Right Thing When Nobody's Looking. Doing The Unpopular Thing Because It's What You Believe, And The Heck With Everybody.

Even On The Darkest Night, My Friend, Life Will Have Its Way.

I Tend To Start At 9 O'clock In The Morning And Write Until 3. Those Are My Best Hours. They Fit The Other Rhythms Of The World. So I Write For Six Hours, Pretty Much Without Any Breaks.

I'm A Workmanlike Writer. I Show Up Every Day And Treat It Like A Job. The Old Rule That Writing Is Like Any Other Job, The First Rule Is That You Must Show Up. I'm At The Keyboard From 9 To 4 Every Day.

It's Different Being Afraid When There's The Hope It Will Amount To Something.

I Was Very Much A Child Of The Cold War.

My Inventing Time Is All Done Under The Influence Of Aerobic Exercise. Basically, I Do All My Thinking While I Run.

The Fact Is, There's A Great Deal Of Hair-splitting Fussiness When It Comes To Fly-fishing, Most Of It As Silly As A Top Hat.

He Breathed Once More, Holding The Air In His Chest, As If It Were Not Air But Something More--a Sweet Taste Of Freedom, Of All Cares Lifted, Everything Over And Done.

There Was Something In The Pages Of These Books That Had The Power To Make Him Feel Better About Things, A Life Raft To Cling To Before The Dark Currents Of Memory Washed Him Downstream Again, And On Brighter Days, He Could Even See Himself Going On This Way For Some Time. A Small But Passable Life. And Then, Of Course, The End Of The World Happened.

My Theory Of Characterization Is Basically This: Put Some Dirt On A Hero, And Put Some Sunshine On The Villain, One Brush Stroke Of Beauty On The Villain.

If You Are Writing Any Book About The End Of The World, What You Are Really Writing About Is What's Worth Saving About It.

The Sadness You Feel Is Not Your Own. It's His Sadness You Feel In Your Heart, Amy, For Missing You.

Because That's What Heaven Is...it's Opening The Door Of A House In Twilight And Everyone You Love Is There.

So Perhaps The Greatest Worry Of All Was That One Day You Would Realize That All The Worries Of Your Life Amounted To One Thing: The Desire To Just Stop Worrying.

Miles Away From Everthing And Everyone I've Ever Known Or Loved. I Feel As If I've Entered A New Era Of My Life. What Strange Places Our Lives Carry Us To.

Sara Waited A Respectful Time, Knowing There Was Nothing She Could Do To Ease The Woman's Pain. Grief Was A Place, Sara Understood, Where A Person Went Alone. It Was Like A Room Without Doors, And What Happened In That Room, All The Anger And The Pain You Felt, Was Meant To Stay There, Nobody's Business But Yours.

I'm An Ecumenical Reader, Grew Up With All Sorts Of Fiction, Teach Writing, Went To The Iowa Writers' Workshop, So My Tastes And Interests Are Broad.

One Thing That Worried Me Was How Writers Get Categorized And So They End Up Having To Write The Same Kind Of Book Again And Again. That Is Fine If It Is What You Want To Do, But I Would Rather Be Locked In The Trunk Of My Car With A Weasel Than Write The Same Book Every Three Years Until I Die.

So, Whenever I'm Writing, I'm Writing In The Presence Of All The Other Books I've Read And I Think We All Are.

Here She Was, A Women Who Could Bolt-load A Crossbow In Under A Second, Put Half A Dozen Long Arrows In The Air In Fewer Than Five, Blade A Target Dead Through The Sweet Spot At Six Meters, On The Run, On An Off Day; And Yet Knitting A Pair Of Baby Booties Seemed Completely Beyond Her Power.

A Baby Was A Fact. It Was A Being With A Mind And A Nature, And You Could Feel About It Any Way You Liked, But A Baby Wouldn't Care. Just By Existing, It Demanded That You Believe In A Future: The Future It Would Crawl In, Walk In, Live In. A Baby Was A Piece Of Time; It Was A Promise You Made That The World Made Back To You.

I Came To Houston For A Job, The Reason Most People Move Halfway Across The Country With A First Grader And A Five-week-old. I Came Here To Teach At Rice.

Behind Every Writer Stands A Very Large Bookshelf.

It Had Never Occurred To Her That God Would Cry, But Of Course That Was Wrong. God Would Be Crying All The Time. He Would Cry And Cry And Never Stop.

If Asked To Name The Worst Moment Of His Life, Michael Fisher Wouldn't Have Hesitated To Give His Answer: It Was When The Lights Went Out.

If You Write A Good Action Sequence Well In A Novel, You're Already Writing It For Film, Because The Only Way To Do It Well Is To Use Some Of The Same Tricks. They're Rhetorical, Not Visual, But It's The Same Move.

That Literary-popular Distinction Is, In My View, Vastly Overstated. At The Far Poles There Are Clearly Books That Are Purely Commercial And Purely Literary, Written For Audiences That Want To See The Same Thing Enacted Over And Over And Over Again. But The Middle Is Where Most People Read And Most People Write.

There's An Outline For Each Of The Books That I Adhere To Pretty Closely, But I'm Not Averse To Taking It In A New Direction, As Long As I Can Get It Back To Where I Need It To Go.

I Think Many Years Ago I Got On A Bus In L.a. And Drove Around To See The Stars' Homes, But That's The Extent Of My Direct Experience In Hollywood.

When You Write, You Take The Ball And You Hold It Up To The Light And You Turn It Slowly, And Let People Draw Their Own Conclusions. And Try To Bring Empathy To All Sides Of The Equation.

And I Grew Up On A Steady Diet Of Science Fiction, Especially Apocalyptic And Postapocalyptic Fiction.

Before She Became The Girl From Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, The First And Last And Only, Who Lived A Thousand Years-she Was Just A Little Girl In Iowa, Named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.

The Military Was All About Hierarchies, Who Urinated Highest On The Hydrant

She Remembered No One At All. She Remembered One Day Thinking: I Am Alone. There Is No I But I. She Lived In The Dark. She Taught Herself To Walk In The Light, Though It Was Not Easy.

I Saw My One Purpose In That Moment, Looking Into That Little Girls Eyes. I Was The One Who Was Meant To Save Her, That Was My One Purpose All This Time.

As Long As We Remember A Person, They're Not Really Gone. Their Thoughts, Their Feelings, Their Memories, They Become A Part Of Us.

I Like Creating Villains.

And Indeed, I Am A Warmhearted And Thoroughly Domestic Man Who Gets Up And Makes Pancakes For His Children And Kisses Them On The Head When He Sends Them Off To Their Day.

It Was Possible, He Understood, For A Person's Life To Become Just A Long Series Of Mistakes, And That The End, When It Came, Was Just One More Mistake In A Chain Of Bad Choices. The Thing Was, Most Of These Mistakes Were Actually Borrowed From Other People. You Took Their Bad Ideas, And For Whatever Reason, Made Them Your Own.

Writing Is A Job: You Must Show Up.

I Have Any Number Of Completely Dark Obsessions And Fascinations, And None Of This Was Present In My Profile Or My Growing Profile As A Writer.

Kittredge Had Obviously Misjudged Her, But He Had Learned That Was The Way With Most People. The Story Was Never The Story, And It Surprised You, How Much Another Person Could Carry.

I Was A 'planet Of The Apes'-obsessed Kid.

You Learn To Write By Reading, And My Experiences And Tastes As A Reader Are Pretty Wide.

Don't We All Deserve Forgiveness? I Hope We Do; I Believe We Do. Forgiveness Says As Much About The Character Of The Person Bestowing It As The Person Receiving It. Learning To Forgive May Be The Most Difficult Of Human Acts,and The Closest Thing To Divinity, Whatever You Decide That Is.

This Ravishing World. This Achingly Bittersweet, Ravishing World.

A Thousand Recollected Lives Were Passing Through Her, A Thousand Stories - Of Love And Work, Of Parents And Children, Of Duty And Joy And Grief. Beds Slept In And Meals Eaten, And The Bliss And Pain Of The Body, And A View Of Summer Leaves From A Window On A Morning It Had Rained; The Nights Of Loneliness And The Nights Of Love, The Soul In It's Body Keeping Always Longing To Be Known.

Rust, Corrosion, Wind, Rain. The Nibbling Teeth Of Mice And The Acrid Droppings Of Insects And The Devouring Jaws Of Years. The Was Of Nature Upon Machines, Of The Planet's Chaotic Forces Upon The Works Of Humankind. The Energy That Man Had Pulled From The Earth Was Being Inexorably Pulled Back Into It, Sucked Like Water Down A Drain. Before Long, If It Hadn't Happened Already, Not A Single High-tension Pole Would Be Left Standing On The Earth. Mankind Had Built A World That Would Take A Hundred Years To Die. A Century For The Last Light To Go Out.

The World Was A World Of Dreaming Souls Who Could Not Die.

I Like To Break Left When People Think I'm Going To Go Right.

I Grew Up During The Cold War, When Everything Seemed Very Tenuous. For Many Years, Right Up Until The Fall Of The Berlin Wall, I Had Vivid Nightmares Of Nuclear Apocalypse.

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