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At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

-Stephen King

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At Its Most Basic

Stephen King

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At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

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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.

The Concept Of Dreaming Is Known To The Waking Mind But To The Dreamer There Is No Waking, No Real World, No Sanity; There Is Only The Screaming Bedlam Of Sleep.

I Think Telling Stories Is Like Pushing Something. Pushing Against Uncreation Itself, Maybe.

Telling Stories

With Six Weeks' Worth Of Recuperation Time, You'll Also Be Able To See Any Glaring Holes In The Plot Or Character Development. And Listen--if You Spot A Few Of These Big Holes, You Are Forbidden To Feel Depressed About Them Or To Beat Up On Yourself. Screw-ups Happen To The Best Of Us.

But Who Can Foresee Such Things? None Of Us Can Predict The Final Outcomes Of Our Actions, And Few Of Us Even Try; Most Of Us Just Do What We Do To Prolong A Moment's Pleasure Or To Stop The Pain. And Even When We Act For The Noblest Reasons, The Last Link Of The Chain All Too Often Drips With Someone's Blood.

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

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

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.

The Poets Continually And Sometimes Wilfully Mistake Love. Love Is The Old Slaughterer.

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

Death Was No Less A Miracle Than Birth.

When A Man Has Died, He Wants You To Know About It.

Be True, Be Brave, Stand All The Rest Is Darkness.

Humor Is Almost Always Anger With Its Make-up On.

Wow. This Makes Grand Central Look Like A Bus Stop In Buttfuck Nebraska.

Sometimes The Things Presented To Us As Choices Aren't Choices At All.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

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

I Think There Ought To Be Some Serious Discussion By Smart People, Really Smart People, About Whether Or Not Proliferation Of Things Like The Smoking Gun And Tmz And Youtube And The Whole Celebrity Culture Is Healthy. We've Switched From A Culture That Was Interested In Manufacturing, Economics, Politics - Trying To Play A Serious Part In The World - To A Culture That's Really Entertainment-based. I Mean, I Know People Who Can Tell You Who Won The Last Four Seasons On American Idol And They Don't Know Who Their [bleeping] Representatives Are.

If Something Is Accessible To A Lot Of People, It's Got To Be Dumb Because Most People Are Dumb.

God Pisses Down The Back Of Your Neck Every Day But Only Drowns You Once.

Dark Tower Series

It's "merry Christmas" At Our House. Whatever It Is At Yours, Have A Happy One. And Be Good To Somebody.

The Sun Was A Molten Coin Burning A Circle In The Low-hanging Overcast, Surrounded By A Fairy-ring Of Moisture.

Writing Isn't About Making Money, Getting Famous, Getting Dates, Getting Laid, Or Making Friends. In The End, It's About Enriching The Lives Of Those Who Will Read Your Work, And Enriching Your Own Life, As Well. It's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

Politics Always Change. Stories Never Do.

It's A Writer's Job To Carve With Language, To Hew Close To The Bone.

Swear To Me Swear To Me That If It Isn't Dead You'll All Come Back.

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.

There Seems To Be No Air In The Air She Breaths.

It Occured To Her That Pleasure, No Matter How Deep, Was A Ghostly, Ephemeral Thing. Love Might Make The World Go Round, But She Was Convinced It Ws The Cries Of The Badly Wounded Andf Deeply Afflicted Which Spun The Universe On The Great Glass Pole Of It's Axis.

Time Is A Face On The Water.

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

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

One Of Life's Great Truths Is This: When One Is About To Be Struck By A Speeding Six-hundred Pound Coke Machine, One Need Worry About Little Else.

Time Is A Keyhole.... We Sometimes Bend And Peer Through It. And The Wind We Feel On Our Cheeks When We Do--the Wind That Blows Through The Keyhole--is The Breath Of All The Living Universe.

I Love You Too Much To Lie To You, Lisey. I Love You With All That Passes For My Heart. I Suspect That Kind Of All-out Love Becomes A Burden To A Woman In Time, But It's The Only Kind I Have To Give. I Think We're Going To Be Quite A Wealthy Couple In Terms Of Money, But I'll Almost Certainly Be An Emotional Pauper All My Life. I've Got The Money Coming, But As For The Rest I've Got Just Enough For You, And I Won't Ever Dirty Or Dilute It With Lies. Not With The Words I Say, Not With The Ones I Hold Back.

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

I’m So Afraid That All I Can Reach Will Lead Me To All I Dare Not See.

There May Be Fairies, There May Be Elves, But God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

And Didn't They Say That, Although Curiosity Killed The Cat, Satisfaction Brought The Beast Back?

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.

I Want To Write About Spiders. To Me, This Is The One Theme That Cuts Right Across And Scares Just About Everybody. Spiders, To Me, Are Just About The Most Horrible, Awful Things That I Can Think About. I Think Everyone Is Afraid Of Spiders.

He Understood Well Enough How A Man With A Choice Between Pride And Responsibility Will Almost Always Choose Pride--if Responsibility Robs Him Of His Manhood.

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

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

We Each Owe A Death, There Are No Exceptions, I Know That, But Sometimes, Oh God, The Green Mile Is So Long.

Do You Drink?" "of Course,i Just Said I Was A Writer.

Every Liberal In The Country Must Watch Fox News For One Year, And Every Conservative In The Country Must Watch Msnbc For One Year. (middle-of-the-roaders Could Stick With Csi)

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

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.

There Are Books Full Of Great Writing That Don't Have Very Good Stories. Read Sometimes For The Story... Don't Be Like The Book-snobs Who Won't Do That. Read Sometimes For The Words--the Language. Don't Be Like The Play-it-safers Who Won't Do That. But When You Find A Book That Has Both A Good Story And Good Words, Treasure That Book.

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.

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.

Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

Go Now. Our Journey Is Done. And May We Meet Again, In The Clearing, At The End Of The Path.

I Like To Think That Good People Win. But Even Good People Have Other Sides. Most People Will Slow Down To Get A Good Look At An Accident, Even Though They Won't Admit It.

They Were Close To The End Of The Beginning . . .

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

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.

Legends Grow Beards, And Twenty-three Years Is Plenty Of Time To Grow A Long One.

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.

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.

...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.

He Needs To Be Corrected, If You Don't Mind Me Saying So. He Needs A Good Talking-to, And Perhaps A Bit More. My Own Girls, Sir, Didn't Care For The Overlook At First. One Of Them Actually Stole A Pack Of My Matches And Tried To Burn It Down. I Corrected Them. I Corrected Them Most Harshly. And When My Wife Tried To Stop Me From Doing My Duty, I Corrected Her.

As For The End Of The Universe…i Say Let It Come As It Will, In Ice, Fire, Or Darkness. What Did The Universe Ever Do For Me That I Should Mind Its Welfare?

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.

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

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.

A Short Story Is Like A Kiss In The Dark.

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.

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

We Live In A Society Now Where The Sexual Taboo For Children Has Really Passed By The Wayside. Any Nineyear-old Can Go Into A 7-11 And Check Out The Playmate Of The Month, But You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Death. You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Disfigurement. You Don't Want 'em To Know About Creepy Things Because It Might Warp Their Little Minds.

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

As With All Other Aspects Of Fiction, The Key To Writing Good Dialogue Is Honesty.

Fault Always Lies In The Same Place: With Him Weak Enough To Lay Blame.

Good Days And Long Nights To Ya, Sai.

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.

The Past Is Obdurate.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Hurt, Of Course, But More Often Than Not The Best Things Do, I've Found.

If God Rewards Us On Earth For Good Deeds—the Old Testament Suggests It’s So, And The Puritans Certainly Believed It—then Maybe Satan Rewards Us For Evil Ones.

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

Harry Potter Is About Confronting Fears, Finding Inner Strength And Doing What Is Right In The Face Of Adversity. Twilight Is About How Important It Is To Have A Boyfriend.

Time Heals All Wounds.

Time Continued To Pass - The Oldest Trick In The World, And Maybe The Only One That Really Is Magic.

Drive Away And Try To Keep Smiling. Get A Little Rock And Roll On The Radio And Go Toward Life With All The Courage You Can Find And All The Belief You Can Muster. Be True, Be Brave, Stand.

I Can't Lie And Say There Are No Bad Writers. Sorry, But There Are Lots Of Bad Writers.

The Water Was Glassy And Calm, Still Candy-colored In The Afterglow Of Sunset.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

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.

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

When Love Leaves The World, All Hearts Are Still. Tell Them Of My Love And Tell Them Of My Pain And Tell Them Of My Hope, Which Still Lives. For This Is All I Have And All I Am And All I Ask.

There Was A Lot They Didn’t Tell You About Death, She Had Discovered, And One Of The Biggies Was How Long It Took The Ones You Loved Most To Die In Your Heart.

Close Your Eyes And Click Your Heals Three Times...because There's No Place Like Dome.

Whatever Came To Mind, Whatever Came To Hand, I Would Read.

Ninety-five Percent Of People Who Walk The Earth Are Simply Inert. One Percent Are Saints, And One Percent Are Assholes. The Other Three Percent Are People Who Do What They Say They Can Do.

Part Of My Function As A Writer Is To Dream Awake. And That Usually Happens. If I Sit Down To Write In The Morning, In The Beginning Of That Writing Session And The Ending Of That Session, I'm Aware That I'm Writing. I'm Aware Of My Surroundings. It's Like Shallow Sleep On Both Ends, When You Go To Bed And When You Wake Up. But In The Middle, The World Is Gone And I'm Able To See Better.

Some Part Of Me Knew From The First That What I Wanted Was Not Reality But Myth.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

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

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.

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.

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.

What Jack Didn't Understand Was That No Matter Where He Went, The Same Asshole Got Off The Plane.

The Movies Have Never Been A Big Deal To Me. The Movies Are The Movies. They Just Make Them. If They're Good, That's Terrific. If They're Not, They're Not. But I See Them As A Lesser Medium Than Fiction, Than Literature, And A More Ephemeral Medium.

It Don't Matter If You Believe In God Nick, He Believes In You.

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

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.

For Some Reason California's Always Been Where The Struggle Is About How Much Authority You Can Impose On People's Private Lives. It Seems To Show Up There Most Clearly. They Had A Helmet Law For Motorcycles In California And The Bikies Were Saying Things Like, "it Restricts My Vision. I Can't Hear What My Bike's Doing. If It Was On Fire I Wouldn't Know It Until My Ass Caught." And At The Bottom Line What The Bikies Were Saying Was, "look, It's My Goddamn Head And If I Want To Splatter My Brains All Over The Guardrails On The Coast Highway, Super For Me."

We Fall From Womb To Tomb, From One Blackness And Toward Another, Remembering Little Of The One And Knowing Nothing Of The Other ... Except Through Faith.

Knowing Nothing

Nightmares Exist Outside Of Logic, And There's Little Fun To Be Had In Explanations; They're Antithetical To The Poetry Of Fear.

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.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

I Don't Want To Just Mess With Your Head. I Want To Mess With Your Life.... I Want You To Miss Appointments, Burn Dinner, Skip Your Homework. I Want You To Tell Your Wife To Take That Moonlight Stroll On The Beach At Waikiki With The Resort Tennis Pro While You Read A Few More Chapters.

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.

Las Personas Con Un Alto Nivel De Tolerancia Al Aburrimiento Tienen Tiempo De Sobra Para Pensar.

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. - Japanese Proverb

Japanese Proverbs

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.

There's A Mr. Hyde For Every Happy Jekyll Face, A Dark Face On The Other Side Of The Mirror.

Above All Else, Be Consistent.

When It Comes To Horror There's A Strange Need To Analyze. When "evil Children" Fad Happened, There Was The Exorcist And The Other And The Omen. People Would Say, "what This Really Means Is That Americans Don't Want To Have Kids Anymore. They Feel Hostility Towards Their Own Children. They Feel They're Being Tied Down And Dragged Down." In Fact, In Most Cases, What Those Books Are About Is Nice Children Who Are Beset By Forces Beyond Their Control.

It Was Really Amazing The Number Of Hard Hits From Which A Mind Could Recover.

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.

The Beauty Of Religious Mania Is That It Has The Power To Explain Everything. Once God (or Satan) Is Accepted As The First Cause Of Everything Which Happens In The Mortal World, Nothing Is Left To Chance...logic Can Be Happily Tossed Out The Window.

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

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

A Lot Of Us Grow Up And We Grow Out Of The Literal Interpretation That We Get When We're Children, But We Bear The Scars All Our Life. Whether They're Scars Of Beauty Or Scars Of Ugliness, It's Pretty Much In The Eye Of The Beholder.

The First Is That Good Writing Consists Of Mastering The Fundamentals (vocabulary, Grammar, The Elements Of Style) And Then Filling The Third Level Of Your Toolbox With The Right Instruments. The Second Is That While It Is Impossible To Make A Competent Writer Out Of A Bad Writer, And While Is Equally Impossible To Make A Great Writer Out Of A Good One, It Is Possible, With Lots Of Hard Work, Dedication, And Timely Help, To Make A Good Writer Out Of A Merely Competent One

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.

The Family Exists For Many Reasons, But Its Most Basic Function May Be To Draw Together After A Member Dies.

Somebody Asked Somerset Maugham About His Place In The Pantheon Of Writers, And He Said, "i'm In The Very Front Row Of The Second Rate." I'm Sort Of Haunted By That.

She Ran Out Of Her Marriage The Way A Woman Can Run Out Of A Pair Of Sandals When She Decides To Let Go And Really Dash.

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

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 Crazy People Of The World...shouldn't Get To Win. If God Won't Make It Better After They Do Have Their Shitty Little Victories, Then Ordinary People Have To. They Have To Try, At Least.

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.

Whenever Anything Important Happens In America, They Have To Gold-plate It, Like Baby Shoes. That Way You Can Forget It.

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

Too Often, In Novels That Are Speculative, God Is A Kind Of Kryptonite, And That's About All That It Is, And It Goes Back To Dracula, Where Someone Dumps A Crucifix In Count Dracula's Face, And He Pulls Away And Runs Back Into His House. That's Not Religion. That's Some Kind Of Juju, Like A Talisman.

We Never Cease Wanting What We Want, Whether It's Good For Us Or Not.

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.

Good Books Don't Give Up All Their Secrets At Once.

It's Up To Men To Build Things ... It's Up To God To Blow Them Down.

I've Always Thought It Would Be Fun To Update "hansel And Gretel." I'd Have These White Parents In The Suburbs With An Income Of Fifty Or Sixty Thousand Dollars. Daddy Loses His Job, And The Wicked Stepmother Says, "we Could Get Along, We Could Keep Our Mastercharge, If You'd Just Get Rid Of Those Shitty Kids." Finally The Father Hires A Limo And Tells The Driver, "drop 'em Off On Lenox Avenue In Harlem At Two In The Morning." These Two Little White Kids Land There. They're Menaced. And This Supposedly Nice Black Lady Says, "would You Like Some Candy?"

Love Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where There Was Only Fear

I’ve Always Said To People, "i Don’t Care What You Call Me As Long As The Checks Don’t Bounce And The Family Gets Fed." But I Never Saw Myself That Way. I Just Saw Myself As A Novelist.

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

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.

Go Then, There Are Other Worlds Than These.

A Secret Needs Two Faces To Bounce Between; A Secret Needs To See Itself In Another Pair Of Eyes.

I Think We Fought Vietnam For The Benefits Of Civilization, And Certainly We Fought It To Oppose Authority. To Show Our Authority, To Show We Weren't Weak. Isn't That What Nixon Kept Saying? "we Have To Show The World That We're Not Weak." So Of Course What We Ended Up Showing The World Was That We Were, Yep, Weak. 'cause We Couldn't Beat These Kids In Black Pajamas.

Life Is Fair. We All Get The Same Nine-month Shake In The Box, And Then The Dice Roll. Some People Get A Run Of Sevens. Some People, Unfortunately, Get Snake-eyes. Its Just How The World Is.

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.

The Story Is The Only Thing That's Important. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself. It's Like What Bowlers Say. You Hear Writers Talk About Character Or Theme Or Mood Or Mode Or Tense Or Person. But Bowlers Say, If You Make The Spares, The Strikes Will Take Care Of Themselves. If You Can Tell A Story, Everything Else Becomes Possible. But Without Story, Nothing Is Possible, Because Nobody Wants To Hear About Your Sensitive Characters If There's Nothing Happening In The Story. And The Same Is True With Mood. Story Is The Only Thing That's Important.

You Should Never Trust A Person Who Prays In Public.

I Tend To Scare Myself.

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

There Came A Time When You Realized That Moving On Was Pointless. That You Took Yourself With You Wherever You Went.

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.

Our Time Here Is Brief, Our Risk Enormous. Don't Waste The One Or Increase The Other, If You Please.

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

In These Silences Something May Rise

I Got Letters From People That Have Had Peculiar Psychic Experiences, Experiences With The Dead - Sometimes Fairly Tranquil Experiences And Sometimes Very Terrifying Experiences. I Do Believe That A Lot Of Them Are Sincere. I Do Believe, Also, That Some Of Them May Be Misguided. But, I Think The Majority Of Them Have Experienced Something.

There's No Harm In Hoping For The Best As Long As You're Prepared For The Worst.

I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me. I Think We Tend To Write Out Our Phobias.

By The Time I Was Fourteen The Nail In My Wall Would No Longer Support The Weight Of The Rejection Slips Impaled Upon It. I Replaced The Nail With A Spike And Went On Writing.

It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces, And Makes Us Look Like Family.

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

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.

I Didn't Go To Bars Much. One Drunken Asshole Was All I Could Handle And That Was Me. I Wrote. I Don't Remember A Lot Of It.

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

Keeping Secrets

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.

A Library Is A Place Where You Can Live A Thousand Lives. So Why Are You Waiting When You Could Be Living? Visit Your Library Today.

They Were Trying To Run, Trying To Hide. But The Rock Would Not Hide Them; The Dead Tree Gave No Shelter.

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

Sooner Or Later

When You Write A Story, You’re Telling Yourself The Story,” He Said. “when You Rewrite, Your Main Job Is Taking Out All The Things That Are Not The Story.

She Is A Cat With A Burning Tail, An Ant Under A Microscope, A Fly About To Lose Its Wings To The Curious Plucking Fingers Of A Third-grader On A Rainy Day, A Game For Bored Children With No Bodies And The Whole Universe At Their Feet.

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

Good Writing Is Often About Letting Go Of Fear And Affectation. Affectation Itself, Beginning With The Need To Define Some Sorts Of Writing As 'good' And Other Sorts As 'bad' Is Fearful Behavior.

And I Wonder If There Is Really Any Point To What I'm Doing, Or What I'm Supposed To Make Of A World Where A Man Can Get Rich Playing "let's Pretend

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.

The Man In Black Smiled. "shall We Tell The Truth Then, You And I? No More Lies?" I Thought We Had Been." But The Man In Black Persisted As If Roland Hadn't Spoken. "shall There Be Truth Between Us, As Two Men? Not As Friends, But As Equals? There Is An Offer You Will Get Rarely, Roland. Only Equals Speak The Truth, That's My Thought On't. Friends And Lovers Lie Endlessly, Caught In The Web Of Regard. How Tiresome!

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

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.

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.

Murder Is Like Potato Chips: You Can't Stop With Just One.

God Always Punishes Us For What We Can't Imagine.

Deep Inside Her (ih Her Harrowed Soul) She Felt A Glowing Ember Of Fury At The Man Responsible For This. Tha Man Who Had Put Her In This Position. She Looked At The Pistol Lying Beside The Basin, And Knew That If He Were Here, She Would Use It On Him Without A Moment's Hesitation. Knowing That Made Her Feel Confused About Herself. It Also Made Her Feel A Little Stronger.

What If There Were No Grownups? Suppose The Whole Idea Of Grownups Was An Illusion? What If Their Money Was Really Just Playground Marbles, Their Business Deals No More Than Baseball-card Trades, Their Wars Only Games Of Guns In The Park? What If They Were All Still Snotty-nosed Kids Inside Their Suits And Dresses? Christ, That Couldn't Be, Could It? It Was Too Horrible To Think About.

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 Don't Really Map Anything Out. I Just Let It Happen [while Writing]. But Once It Happens, It's Always There. If It's Laid, It's Played. If I Get To Page 300 And It's Not Working, I Junk It.

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Charisma Carpenter

Megan McCafferty

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