Background Image

...

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.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

As A Young Man

Stephen King

...

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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Stephen King

Things Come In Three Major Degrees In The Human Experience, I Think. There's Good, Bad, And Terrible. And As You Go Down Into Progressive Darkness Towards Terrible, It Gets Harder And Harder To Make Subdivisions.

Life Is Like A Wheel. Sooner Or Later, It Always Come Around To Where You Started Again.

Sooner Or Later

You Could Start At A Path Leading Nowhere More Fantastic Than From Your Own Front Steps To The Sidewalk, And From There You Could Go… Well, Anywhere At All.

I Think It Is Harder To Write A Story That Appeals To The Intellect. But, When You Tie Onto One, You Can Do It Quite Deeply. It Really Depends On The Type Of Idea You Have To Begin With.

It's A Little Place On The Pacific Ocean. You Know What The Mexicans Say About The Pacific? They Say It Has No Memory. That's Where I Want To Live The Rest Of My Life. A Warm Place With No Memory.

There Is No Idea Dump, No Story Central, No Island Of The Buried Bestsellers; Good Stories Seem To Come Quite Literally From Nowhere, Sailing At You Right Out Of The Empty Sky.

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.

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.

It's Hard Enough For A Person To Keep Their Own Socks Pulled Up, Let Alone Someone Else's.

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.

Dead Was The Gift That Kept On Giving. Dead, Like Diamonds, Was Forever.

We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives.

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

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'd Like To Learn French Well Enough To Write In That Language.

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

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

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.

Death Is A Mystery, And Burial Is A Secret.

The Monster Nevers Dies.

Flip-flop, Hippety-hop, Offa Your Rocker And Over The Top, Life's A Fiction And The World's A Lie, So Put On Some Creedence And Let's Get High.

I Think Most Of Us Are Fascinated By The Macabre And By The Weird And Even The Nastiness That Comes Along.

If You're Going Into A Very Dark Place, Then You Should Take A Bright Light, And Shine It On Everything. If You Don't Want To See, Why In God's Name Would You Dare The Dark At All?

I Am Your Number One Fan.

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

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.

In The End, The Wind Takes Everything, Doesn't It? And Why Not? Why Other? If The Sweetness Of Our Lives Did Not Depart, There Would Be No Sweetness At All.

I Believe In Evil, But All My Life I've Gone Back And Forth About Whether Or Not There's An Outside Evil, Whether Or Not There's A Force In The World That Really Wants To Destroy Us, From The Inside Out, Individually And Collectively.

Each Life Makes Its Own Immitation Of Immortality.

Above, The Stars Shone Hard And Bright, Sparks Struck Off The Dark Skin Of The Universe.

My Mother Was A Reader, And She Read To Us. She Read Us Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde When I Was Six And My Brother Was Eight; I Never Forgot It.

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

Words Create Sentences; Sentences Create Paragraphs; Sometimes Paragraphs Quicken And Begin To Breathe.

I've Always Believed In God. I Also Think That's The Sort Of Thing That Either Comes As Part Of The Equipment, The Capacity To Believe, Or At Some Point In Your Life, When You're In A Position Where You Actually Need Help From A Power Greater Than Yourself, You Simply Make An Agreement.

If You Wrote Something For Which Someone Sent You A Check, If You Cashed The Check And It Didn't Bounce, And If You Then Paid The Light Bill With The Money, I Consider You Talented.

Talent Is Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work.

Just Remember That Dumbo Didn't Need The Feather; The Magic Was In Him.

The Only [working] Ritual Is Making Tea. I Use The Loose Leaves And Drink It By The Gallon.

Some Birds Are Not Meant To Be Caged, That's All. Their Feathers Are Too Bright, Their Songs Too Sweet And Wild. So You Let Them Go, Or When You Open The Cage To Feed Them They Somehow Fly Out Past You. And The Part Of You That Knows It Was Wrong To Imprison Them In The First Place Rejoices, But Still, The Place Where You Live Is That Much More Drab And Empty For Their Departure.

A Product Is Something Made In A Factory; A Brand Is Something That Is Bought By The Customer. A Product Can Be Copied By A Competitor; A Brand Is Unique. A Product Can Be Quickly Outdated; A Successful Brand Is Timeless.

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

Men! She Could Not Understand Why So Many Women Feared Them. Hadn't The Gods Made Them With The Most Vurnerable Part Of Their Guts Hanging Right Out Of Their Bodies, Like A Misplaced Bit Of Bowel? Kick Them There And They Curled Up Like Snails. Caress Them There And Their Brains Melted.

Writing Is Like Sex. The More You Think About It, The Harder It Is To Do. It's Better Not To Think About It So Much And Just Let It Happen.

I Drink A Lot Of Beer, And That's The Drug Of Choice. You Find The Drug That Works For You. I Know, For Instance, This Guy Named Harlan Ellison - And He's Not Alone - Who's Very Proud Of The Fact That He Doesn't Put Dope Into His Body. He Tries Not To Put Additives Into His Body, Or Anything Like That. But He Can Afford To Do That Because Harlan's Drug Of Choice Is Harlan.

Reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer's Life." -

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.

Because Who Would Ever Want To Get Close To Another Person If They Knew How Hard The Letting-go Part Was? In Your Heart They Only Die A Little At A Time, Don't They? Like A Plant When You Go Away On A Trip And Forget To Ask A Neighbor To Poke In Once In Awhile With The Old Watering-can, And Its So Sad—

Ninety-eight Percent Of What Goes On In People's Heads Is None Of Their Smucking Business.

I Wasn't A Social Drinker. I Used To Say That I Didn't Want To Go To Bars Because They Were Full Of Assholes Like Me.

There Were People Who Lied For Gain, People Who Lied From Pain, People Who Lied Simply Because The Concept Of Telling The Truth Was Utterly Alien To Them . . . And Then There Were People Who Lied Because They Were Waiting For It To Be Time To Tell The Truth.

Terror?often Arises From A Pervasive Sense Of Disestablishment; That Things Are In The Unmaking.

Constant Reading Will Pull You Into A Place - A Mind-set, If You Like The Phrase - Where You Can Write Eagerly And Without Self-consciousness.

Nothing Is Ever Lost, Sarah. Nothing That Can't Be Found.

I Started To Submit When I Was Twelve, And Obviously At That Time They Weren't Good Enough, And I Suppose In My Heart Of Hearts I Knew It. But You Have To Start Sooner Or Later, You Have To Dig In.

When I Was Younger, I Used To Vacillate Between Thinking Love Was This Great And Glorious Mystery And Thinking It Was Just Something A Bunch Of Hollywood Move Producers Made Up To Sell More Tickets In The Depression, When Dish Night Kind Of Played Out." Eddie Laughed. Now I Think That All Of Us Are Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You...eddie, You Fill Me Up.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

Must You Write Complete Sentences Each Time, Every Time? Perish The Thought. If Your Work Consists Only Of Fragments And Floating Clauses, The Grammar Police Aren't Going To Come And Take You Away. Even William Strunk, That Mussolini Of Rhetoric, Recognized The Delicious Pliability Of Language. "it Is An Old Observation," He Writes, "that The Best Writers Sometimes Disregard The Rules Of Rhetoric." Yet He Goes On To Add This Thought, Which I Urge You To Consider: "unless He Is Certain Of Doing Well, [the Writer] Will Probably Do Best To Follow The Rules."

But Sorry Is The Kool-aid Of Human Emotions. [...] True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

Now Comes The Big Question: What Are You Going To Write About? And The Equally Big Answer: Anything You Damn Well Want. Anything At All .... As Long As You Tell The Truth.

I’m Not Particularly Keen On Writing Which Exhaustively Describes The Physical Characteristics Of The People In The Story And What They’re Wearing… I Can Always Get A J. Crew Catalogue… …so Spare Me, If You Please, The Hero’s ‘sharply Intelligent Blue Eyes’ And ‘outthrust Determined Chin’.

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

I Identify With The Characters Very Closely. At The Same Time That I`m Outside, Writing, I`m Also Inside, Experiencing, And It Can Be Very Unsettling.

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.

Do I Know What People Say? Sure. I Shrug It Off. What Else Can You Do? Stop People From Talking? You Might As Well Try To Stop The Wind From Blowing.

The King Is In His Tower, Eating Bread And Honey. The Breakers In The Basement, Making All The Money.

Writers Write. That's All It Is. It Is As Simple, And As Complex, As That.

The Worst Advice? 'don't Listen To The Critics.' I Think That You Really Ought To Listen To The Critics, Because Sometimes They're Telling You Something Is Broken That You Can Fix.

Love, The Simplest, Strongest, And Most Unforgiving Of All Emotions.

There's Two Kinds Of Evil That Horror Fiction Always Deals With. One Kind Is The Sort Of Evil That Comes From Inside People, Like In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. The Other Kind Of Evil Is Predestined Evil. It Falls On You Like A Stroke Of Lightning. That's The Scary Stuff, But, In A Way, It's The Stuff You Don't Have To Worry About. I Gotta Worry Whether Or Not I'm Getting Cavities. I Gotta Worry About Whether Cigarettes Are Giving Me Cancer. Those Are Things I Can Change. Don't Give Me Lightning Out Of A Clear Sky. If That Hits Me I Just Say, "that's Probably The Way God Meant It To Be."

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

The Loss Of Memory Isn't Always The Problem; Sometimes--maybe Even Often--it's The Solution.

Any Parting Could Be Forever, And We Don't Know.

And She Sees That The Moonlight Is Losing Its Orange Glow. It Has Become Buttery, And Will Soon Turn To Silver.

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

Want A Coke?” Abra Asked. “sugar Solves Lots Of Problems, That’s What I Think.

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

We Never Know Which Lives We Influence, Or When, Or Why. Not Until The Future Eats The Present, Anyway. We Know When It's Too Late.

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

Writing Is A Lonely Job. Having Someone Who Believes In You Makes A Lot If Difference. They Don't Have To Makes Speeches. Just Believing Is Usually Enough.

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

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?

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.

I've Spread My Legs In The Backseat In A Creative Sense Quite A Few Times.

I Do Believe That When We're In The Process Of Dying, That All These Emergency Circuits In The Brain Take Over. I Base What I'm Saying Not On Any Empirical Evidence. I Think It's Very Possible That When You're Dying, These Circuits Open Up, Which Would Explain This Whole White-light Phenomena - When People Clinically Die And They See Their Relatives And Stuff And Say, "hello, It's Great To See You."

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

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

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.

I'd Been Raised By My Parents To Believe Barfing Your Feelings On Other People Was The Height Of Impoliteness.

The More Fiction You Read And Write, The More You'll Find Your Paragraphs Forming On Their Own.

They Had Become A Fixed Star In The Shifting Firmament Of The High School's Relationships, The Acknowledged Romeo And Juliet. And She Knew With Sudden Hatefulness That There Was One Couple Like Them In Every White Suburban High School In America.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

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

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

Some Of This Book—perhaps Too Much—has Been About How I Learned To Do It. Much Of It Has Been About How You Can Do It Better. The Rest Of It—and Perhaps The Best Of It—is A Permission Slip: You Can, You Should, And If You're Brave Enough To Start, You Will. Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

Paul Lepage Has Become A Terrible Embarrassment To The State I Live In And Love. If He Won't Govern, He Should Resign.

I Choose To Believe In God, But I Have Serious Doubts.

The Man In Black Fled Across The Desert, And The Gunslinger Followed.

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.

Sometimes A Man And A Woman Reach A Crossroads And Linger There, Reluctant To Take Either Way, Knowing The Wrong Choice Will Mean The End... And Knowing There’s So Much Worth Saving.

Scaring People, Especially In Our Day And Time, Is One Of The Hardest Things On Earth, As Far As I Am Concerned.

The Death Of The Music Business Was Insane, But Audio Recordings Have Been Around Now For Maybe 120 Years. Books Have Been Around For, What, Nine Centuries? So They're More Entrenched Than Music.

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

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

At Nineteen, It Seems To Me, One Has A Right To Be Arrogant; Time Has Usually Not Begun Its Stealthy And Rotten Subtractions. It Takes Away Your Hair And Your Jump-shot, According To A Popular Country Song, But In Truth It Takes Away A Lot More Than That.

Death Is When The Monsters Get You.

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

Sooner Or Later

If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

When You Write A Book, You Spend Day After Day Scanning And Identifying The Trees. When You’re Done, You Have To Step Back And Look At The Forest.

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

It's A Cash And Carry World. Sometimes You Pay A Little. Mostly It's A Lot. Sometimes, It's Everything You Have.

Every Marriage Has Two Hearts, One Light And One Dark

There Is Zero, And There Is Eternity, And There Is Mortality, But There Is No Ultimate.

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

Here I Am, Ninety Years Old And Ready For The Cooling Board, Using A Brand New Macintosh Computer, And There You Sit, Twenty-two And Gorgeous, Fresh As A New Peach, Yet Scrawling On A Yellow Legal Pad Like An Old Maid In A Victorian Romance.

I Did Spend Years As An Addict, So I Know That World, Although I Wish I Didn't.

Her Body Was Wrapped In Shadows Like Moth Wings, Like Rose-petals.

Never's The Word God Listens For When He Needs A Laugh.

The Dream Might Have Been More Than A Dream. It Was As If A Door In The Wall Of Reality Had Come Ajar... And Now All Sorts Of Unwelcome Things Were Flying Through.

I Just Didn't Want Her To Get Hurt. I Thought She Was Going To Be. But Everyone Gets Their Share, Don't They? Sure. Pow, In The Nose. Pow, In The Eye. Pow, Below The Belt, Down You Go, And The Ref Just Went Out For A Hot Dog.

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.

Outside, Daylight Was Bleeding Slowly Toward Dusk.

Luck's The Word Those With Poor Hearts Use For Ka.

Carrie Was A Terrific Piece Of Work. At The End Of The Movie Comes, When Amy Irving Kneels Down To Put The Flowers On Carrie's Grave, A Hand Comes Up Through The Grave And Seizes Her By The Arm. The Audience Went To The Roof, Totally To The Roof. It Was Just The Most Amazing Reaction. And I Thought, 'we Have A Monster Hit On Our Hands. Brian De Palma Has Done Something New. He's Actually Created A Shock Ending That Shocks An Audience That Was Ready For A Horror Film.' And There Were Several People Who Did It After That.

Late Last Night And The Night Before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers Knocking On My Door. I Wanna Go Out, Don't Know If I Can 'cuz I'm So Afraid Of The Tommyknocker Man.

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 Don't Want You To Apologize For Being Rich; I Want You To Acknowledge That In America, We All Should Have To Pay Our Fair Share.

When Asked, "how Do You Write?" I Invariably Answer, "one Word At A Time," And The Answer Is Invariably Dismissed. But That Is All It Is. It Sounds Too Simple To Be True, But Consider The Great Wall Of China, If You Will: One Stone At A Time, Man. That's All. One Stone At A Time. But I've Read You Can See That Motherfucker From Space Without A Telescope.

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

I Think Most Of Us Can Remember From Our Own Childhood, Just In The Disney Cartoons, Things That Frightened Us Profoundly. For Me It Was Bambi, The Scene When The Forest Was On Fire. That Was Something I Had Nightmares About. I Can't Imagine Being A Little Kid Of Eight And Seeing Night Of The Living Dead With Living Corpses Eating The Flesh Of Living People.

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

One Only Wishes Wayne Lapierre And His Nra Board Of Directors Could Be Drafted To Some Of These Scenes, Where They Would Be Required To Put On Booties And Rubber Gloves And Help Clean Up The Blood, The Brains, And The Chunks Of Intestine Still Containing The Poor Wads Of Half-digested Food That Were Some Innocent Bystander's Last Meal.

Talent Is A Dreadfully Cheap Commodity, Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work And Study; A Constant Process Of Honing. Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

I Felt Lonely And Content At The Same Time. I Believe That Is A Rare Kind Of Happiness.

You Said 'god Is Cruel' The Way A Person Who's Lived His Whole Life On Tahiti Might Say 'snow Is Cold'. You Knew, But You Didn't Understand." He Stepped Close To David And Put His Palms On The Boy's Cold Cheeks. "do You Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?

The Ghost Story Movie That Scared Me The Most Was The Changeling With George C. Scott. I Think That's Sometimes Overlooked, But It's A Wonderful Piece Of Work.

So What, Ghosts Can't Hurt You. That's What I Thought Then.

Seven, Richie Thought. That's The Magic Number. There Has To Be Seven Of Us. That's The Way It's Supposed To Be.

The Situation Comes First...the Characters...come Next...[then] Begin To Narrate.

Anger Is The Most Useless Emotion," Henchick Intoned, "destructive To The Mind And Hurtful To The Heart.

High School Isn't A Very Important Place. When You're Going You Think It's A Big Deal, But When It's Over Nobody Really Thinks It Was Great Unless They're Beered Up.

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

My Feeling Of The Whole Genre, Of The Terror Tale, Is This: The Best Thing That You Can Do For The Readers In This Field Is To Terrify Them. It Is Something That Is Intellectual, It Happens In Your Mind.

He Looked To Her Like An Absurd Twentieth-century Hamlet, An Indecisive Figure So Mesmerized By Onrushing Tragedy That He Was Helpless To Divert Its Course Or Alter It In Any Way.

Black As Night And As Beautiful As Forever.

Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie.

Calling It A Simple Schoolgirl Crush Was Like Saying A Rolls-royce Was A Vehicle With Four Wheels, Something Like A Hay-wagon. She Did Not Giggle Wildly And Blush When She Saw Him, Nor Did She Chalk His Name On Trees Or Write It On The Walls Of The Kissing Bridge. She Simply Lived With His Face In Her Heart All The Time, A Kind Of Sweet, Hurtful Ache. She Would Have Died For Him.

Do You Happen To Have Another Condom? I Think I've Discovered The Cure For Headaches.

The Things A Man Sees When He Ain't Got A Gun.--watson The Caretaker

Discipline And Constant Work Are The Whetstones Upon Which The Dull Knife Of Talent Is Honed Until It Becomes Sharp Enough, Hopefully, To Cut Through Even The Toughest Meat And Gristle.

The Road And The Tale Have Both Been Long, Would You Not Say So? The Trip Has Been Long And The Cost Has Been High... But No Great Thing Was Ever Attained Easily. A Long Tale, Like A Tall Tower, Must Be Built A Stone At A Time.

Money Can't Buy Off The Lightning.

Time Takes It All, Whether You Want It To Or Not. Time Takes It All, Time Bears It Away, And In The End There Is Only Darkness. Sometimes We Find Others In That Darkness, And Sometimes We Lose Them There Again.

I've Spoken Out My Whole Life Against The Idea Of Simply Dismissing Whole Areas Of Fiction By Saying It's "genre" And Therefore Can't Be Seen As Literature.

Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit. Fiction Writers, Present Company Included, Don’t Understand Very Much About What They Do—not Why It Works When It’s Good, Not Why It Doesn’t When It’s Bad.

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.

We Like To Think About How Smart We Are. But I Think Talent As A Writer Is Hard-wired In, It's All There, At Least The Basic Elements Of It. You Can't Change It Any More Than You Can Choose Whether To Be Right Handed Or Left Handed.

"am I Weird?" "yeah. But So What? Everybody's Weird."

Put An Egg In Your Shoe And Beat It, Make Like A Tree And Leave, Imitate An Amoeba And Split.

For A Woman A Man Will Do Many Things That He'd Turn His Back On In An Instant When Alone; Things He'd Back Away From, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Even When Drunk Adn With A Bunch Of His Friends Egging Him On.

I Think You're A Taker. You've Always Been One. It's Like God Left Some Part Of You Out When He Built You Inside Of Me.

It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair. So Cried His Child's Heart, And Then His Child's Heart Died A Little. For That Is Also The Way Of The World.

And The Rain Went Rollin Down The Windowpanes, And The Shadows Wiggled N' Squiggled On Her Check And Forehead Like Black Veins.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

Good Description Is A Learned Skill, One Of The Prime Reasons Why You Cannot Succeed Unless You Read A Lot And Write A Lot. It’s Not Just A Question Of How-to, You See; It’s Also A Question Of How Much To. Reading Will Help You Answer How Much, And Only Reams Of Writing Will Help You With The How. You Can Learn Only By Doing.

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.

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.

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

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.

You Cannot Condemn A Man For What May Only Be A Figment Of Your Own Imagination.

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

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.

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.

Battles That Last Five Minutes Spawn Legends That Live A Thousand Years.

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.

Families, When A Child Is Born Want It To Be Intelligent. I, Through Intelligence, Having Wrecked My Whole Life, Only Hope The Baby Will Prove Ignorant And Stupid. Then He Will Crown A Tranquil Life By Becoming A Cabinet Minister.

Home Is Where You Dance With Others, And Dancing Is Life.

I'm Seen As Somebody Who Writes For Adults Because I'm An Older Man Myself. Some Of Them Find Me, And A Lot Of Them Don't.

If God Gives You Something You Can Do, Why In God's Name Wouldn't You Do It?

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'm Having A Magenta Day. Not Just Red, But Magenta!

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.

The Redness Was Going Out Of The Light Now, The Remains Of The Day Were A Fading Pink, The Color Of Wild Roses.

Few If Any Seemed To Have Grasped The Principle Of Reality; New Knowledge Leads Always To Yet More Awesome Mysteries. Greater Physiological Knowledge Of The Brain Makes The Existence Of The Soul Less Possible Yet More Probable By The Nature Of The Search.

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.

Your Hair Is Winter Fire January Embers My Heart Burns There, Too.

...stopping A Piece Of Work Just Because It's Hard, Either Emotionally Or Imaginatively, Is A Bad Idea. Sometimes You Have To Go On When You Don't Feel Like It, And Sometimes You're Doing Good Work When If Feels Like All You're Managing Is To Shovel Sh*t From A Sitting Position.

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

The Stories We Hear In Our Childhood Are The Ones We Remember All Our Lives.

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

To Write Is Human, To Edit Is Divine.

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?

Bird And Bear And Hare And Fish, Give My Love Her Fondest Wish.

A Dimwit Thinks Nothing Is Funny Unless It's Mean.

These Self-appointed Deacons In The Church Of Latter-day American Literature Seem To Regard Generosity (of Words) With Suspicion, Texture With Dislike, And Any Broad Literary Stroke With Outright Hate. The Result Is A Strange And Arid Literary Climate Where A Meaningless Little Fingernail Paring Like Nicholson Baker's Vox Becomes An Object Of Fascinated Debate And Dissection, And A Truly Ambitious American Novel Like Matthew's Heart Of The Country Is All But Ignored.

By Tomorrow At This Time, I Think You're Going To Have A Much Better Idea Of What Crazy Is. -- Ev Hillman

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.

You Cannot Hope To Sweep Someone Else Away By The Force Of Your Writing Until It Has Been Done To You.

Every Man Or Woman Who Loves Him, They Hate Him Too, Because He's A Hard God, A Jealous God.

Trending Author

Category