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Don't Wait For The Muse. As I've Said, He's A Hardheaded Guy Who's Not Susceptible To A Lot Of Creative Fluttering. This Isn't The Ouija Board Or The Spirit-world We're Talking About Here, But Just Another Job Like Laying Pipe Or Driving Long-haul Trucks. Your Job Is To Make Sure The Muse Knows Where You're Going To Be Every Day From Nine 'til Noon. Or Seven 'til Three. If He Does Know, I Assure You That Sooner Or Later He'll Start Showing Up.

-Stephen King

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Don't Wait For The

Stephen King

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Don't Wait For The Muse. As I've Said, He's A Hardheaded Guy Who's Not Susceptible To A Lot Of Creative Fluttering. This Isn't The Ouija Board Or The Spirit-world We're Talking About Here, But Just Another Job Like Laying Pipe Or Driving Long-haul Trucks. Your Job Is To Make Sure The Muse Knows Where You're Going To Be Every Day From Nine 'til Noon. Or Seven 'til Three. If He Does Know, I Assure You That Sooner Or Later He'll Start Showing Up.

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A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

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

... Don't Let Your Elders And Supposed Betters Tell You Any Different. Sure, You've Never Been To Paris. No, You Never Ran With The Bulls At Pamploma. Yes, You're A Pissant Who Had No Hair In Your Armpits Until Three Years Ago - But So What? If You Don't Start Out Too Big For Your Britches, How Are You Gonna Fill 'em When You Grow Up? Let It Rip Regardless Of What Anybody Tells You, That's My Idea; Sit Down An Smoke That Baby.

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Where The World Ends Is Where You Must Begin

If You Were A Real Fascistic Society And You Had A Vocal Minority That Was Shouting, "stop This, Stop That, Stop The Other Thing," What You Would Say Is, "let's Give Them All The Drugs They Want." In A Lot Of States, Something Very Much Like That Happened. They Lowered The Drinking Age To Eighteen And Said, "get Juiced."

They Say That Loving Eyes Can Never See, But That's A Fool's Axiom. Sometimes, They See Too Much

It Didn´t Occur To Me Until Later That There´s Another Truth, Very Simple: Greed In A Good Cause Is Still Greed.

It Starts With This: Put Your Desk In The Corner, And Every Time You Sit Down There To Write, Remind Yourself Why It Isn't In The Middle Of The Room. Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

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

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 Important Question Has Nothing To Do With Whether The Talk In Your Story Is Sacred Or Profane; The Only Question Is How It Rings On The Page And In Your Ear. If You Expect It To Ring True, Then You Must Talk Yourself. Even More Important, You Must Shut Up And Listen To Others Talk.

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

You Cant Be Too Careful On A Skateboard.

Making People Believe The Unbelievable Is No Trick; It's Work... Belief And Reader Absorption Come In The Details: An Overturned Tricycle In The Gutter Of An Abandoned Neighborhood Can Stand For Everything.

I Like To Hang Out Clothes On Windy Days. Sometimes That's All I Feel Like. A Sheet On A Line.

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

There Had Never Been A Shortage Of Fools In The World

There's Nothing Like Stories On A Windy Night When Folks Have Found A Warm Place In A Cold World.

It's A Poorboy Sanditch,' Roland Said. 'with Lots Of Mayo, Whatever That Is. I'd Want A Sauce That Didn't Look Quite So Much Like Come, Myself, But May It Do Ya Fine.

What A Paragon Of Virtue You Are, Gunslinger!" The Man In Black Laughed.

I Think A Lot Of Times Dreams Are Nothing More Than A Kind Of Mental Or Spiritual Flatulence. They're A Way Of Relieving Pressure.

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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.

She Had Never Dreamed There Could Be So Much Pain In A Life When There Was Nothing Physically Wrong. She Hurt All The Time.

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

The Scariest, Most Terrifying Thing That I Fear? Yes. My Imagination. I Thought You Were Going To Say "fear, Itself." Then You Have A Small Imagination.

And Then Woe Is You, Pauly. Woe To The Max.

...you Need Openness And Inability To Do Anything Other Than Get To The Point.

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.

Rationalism Is The Idea That We Can Ever Understand Anything About The State Of Being. It's A Deathtrip. It Always Has Been. . . . And If Rationalism Is A Deathtrip, Then Irrationalism Might Very Well Be A Lifetrip . . . At Least Until It Proves Otherwise.

And That Almost Killed You?" "it Wasn't Deep But It Got Infected. Infection Means That The Bad Germs Got Into It. Infection's The Most Dangerous Thing There Is, Tom. Infection Was What Made The Superflu Germ Kill All The People. And Infection Is What Made People Want To Make The Germ In The First Place. An Infection Of The Mind.

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.

Let’s Talk, You And I. Let’s Talk About Fear. The House Is Empty As I Write This; A Cold February Rain Is Falling Outside. It’s Night. Sometimes When The Wind Blows The Way It’s Blowing Now, We Lose The Power. But For Now It’s On, And So Let’s Talk Very Honestly About Fear. Let’s Talk Very Rationally About Moving To The Rim Of Madnessand... And Perhaps Over The Edge.

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

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Acknowledge Your Good Fortune By Sharing It.

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Was There Ever A Trap To Match The Trap Of Love?

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It Was The Kiss By Which All The Others Of His Life Would Be Judged And Found Wanting.

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Procrastination

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Like The Man Said, A Little Hope Never Hurt Anybody

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

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Knowing Nothing

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

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I Write To Find Out What I Think.

Fear Stands For Face Everything And Recover – Old Aa Saying

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

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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.

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

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In The Stutter-flashes Of Light, The Clouds Look Like Huge Transparent Brains Filled With Bad Thoughts.

...knowing That To Be A Librarian Was To Come As Close As Any Human Being Can To Sitting In The Peak-seat Of Eternity's Engine.

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.

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

Come On Back And We’ll See If You Remember The Simplest Thing Of All – How It Is To Be Children, Secure In Belief And Thus Afraid Of The Dark.

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.

The Exhilaration Was Hard To Explain. It Was A Lonely Feeling — A Somehow Melancholy Feeling. He Was Outside; He Passed On The Wings Of The Wind, And None Of The People Beyond The Brightly Lighted Squares Of Their Windows Saw Him. They Were Inside, Inside Where There Was Light And Warmth. They Didn't Know He Had Passed Them; Only He Knew. It Was A Secret Thing.

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Pray For Rain While Digging A Well.

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I Hope You Liked Them, Reader; That They Did For You What Any Good Story Should Do--make You Forget The Real Stuff Weighing On Your Mind For A Little While And Take You Away To A Place You've Never Been. It's The Most Amiable Sort Of Magic I Know.

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

...my Basic Belief About The Making Of Stories Is That They Pretty Much Make Themselves.

A Short Story Is A Different Thing All Together - A Short Story Is Like A Kiss In The Dark From A Stranger.

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

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.

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As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

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.

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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?

He Was A Clot Looking For A Place To Happen, A Splinter Of Bone Hunting A Soft Organ To Puncture, A Lonely Lunatic Cell Looking For A Mate - They Would Set Up Housekeeping And Raise Themselves A Cozy Little Malignant Tumor.

Any Game Looks Straight If Everyone Is Being Cheated At Once.

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

People Don't Get Better, They Just Get Smarter. When You Get Smarter You Don't Stop Pulling The Wings Off Flies, You Just Think Of Better Reasons For Doing It.

Let's Face It. No Kid In High School Feels As Though They Fit In.

I Tend To Scare Myself.

I'm Rightly Tired Of The Pain I Hear And Feel, Boss. I'm Tired Of Bein On The Road, Lonely As A Robin In The Rain. Not Never Havin No Buddy To Go On With Or Tell Me Where We's Comin From Or Goin To Or Why. I'm Tired Of People Bein Ugly To Each Other. It Feels Like Pieces Of Glass In My Head. I'm Tired Of All The Times I've Wanted To Help And Couldn't. I'm Tired Of Bein In The Dark. Mostly It's The Pain. There's Too Much. If I Could End It, I Would. But I Can't.

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

Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie.

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

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

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

I Think Everybody Has Experiences From Time To Time They Can't Explain. They Are Peculiarities. Usually We Just Dismiss Them Because They Are Uncomfortable To Think About.

I Choose To Believe In God Because It Makes Things Better.

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.

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

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

We Are Going To Fight. We Are Going To Be Hurt. And In The End, We Will Stand.

What Happens To The Wide-eyed Observer When The Window Between Reality And Unreality Breaks And The Glass Begins To Fly?

Your Plan And The Stuff That Comes Out Of My Asshole Bear A Suspicious Resemblance To Each Other.

I Know I Can Do It," Todd Downey Said, Helping Himself To Another Ear Of Corn From The Steaming Bowl. "i'm Sure That In Time Her Death Will Be A Mystery, Even To Me.

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

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

We All Have A Tendency To Want Order In Our Lives. But Order Presupposes Authority, And Authority Presupposes, Sooner Or Later, That We'll All Need Hooves. It's Going To Happen Sooner Or Later, Isn't It? You Know It Is.

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.

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

If I Have To Spend Time In Purgatory Before Going To One Place Or The Other, I Guess I'll Be All Right As Long As There's A Lending Library.

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Delicate Things

Not Every Book Has To Be Loaded With Symbolism, Irony, Or Musical Language, But It Seems To Me That Every Book-at Least Every One Worth Reading-is About Something.

There's Nothing As Human As Hunger. There's No Creation Without Talent, I Give You That, But Talent Is Cheap. Talent Goes Begging. Hunger Is The Piston Of Art.

You Can't Polish A Turd.

Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

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.

The Act Of Writing Itself Is Done In Secret, Like Masturbation.

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

But Then Fall Comes, Kicking Summer Out On Its Treacherous Ass As It Always Does One Day Sometime After The Midpoint Of September, It Stays Awhile Like An Old Friend That You Have Missed. It Settles In The Way An Old Friend Will Settle Into Your Favorite Chair And Take Out His Pipe And Light It And Then Fill The Afternoon With Stories Of Places He Has Been And Things He Has Done Since Last He Saw You.

I'd Like To Take A Motorcycle Trip Across Europe, Maybe Even Across China. Of Course I'd Also Like To Broker A Peace Agreement Between The Israelis And The Palestinians, But It's Important To Put Ceilings On One's Ambitions.

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Despair ... Come To It Any Way But Lightly.

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

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.

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.

I Don't Take Notes; I Don't Outline, I Don't Do Anything Like That. I Just Flail Away At The Goddamn Thing. I'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami. You Can't Sell It As Caviar.

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.

I'll See You.' He Grinned. 'not If I See You First.

I Am Religious In The Sense That I Believe In God And I Believe That There Is An Abiding Logical Spirit That Controls What Goes On To A Certain Extent.

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.

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

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

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

Tracking Account Planning Is Rather Like Counting A Mixed Batch Of Tropical Fish. You Think You See Patterns, But They've All Changed By The Time You've Finished Counting.

A Person Could See A Lot Without Ever Leaving His Own Living Room. Especially If He Had The Right Tools.

There's A Mr. Hyde For Every Happy Jekyll Face, A Dark Face On The Other Side Of The Mirror. The Brain Behind That Face Never Heard Of Razors, Prayers, Or The Logic Of The Universe. You Turn The Mirror Sideways And See Your Face Reflected With A Sinister Left-hand Twist, Half Mad And Half Sane.

And In Real Life Endings Aren't Always Neat, Whether They're Happy Endings, Or Whether They're Sad Endings.

Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

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

May Be She’ll Learn Something About What Death Really Is, Which Is Where The Pain Stops And The Good Memories Begin. Not The End Of Life But The End Of Pain.

I'm Most Afraid Of Losing My Mind. You Lose Your Identity, Your Sense Of Who You Are, Where You Are.

Every Book You Pick Up Has Its Own Lesson Or Lessons, And Quite Often The Bad Books Have More To Teach Than The Good Ones.

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

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

I Dreamed Of You. I Dreamed You Were Wandering In The Dark, And So Was I. We Found Each Other. We Found Each Other In The Dark.

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

There Was A Beautiful Feeling Of Calm In My Groin, A Sense Of Peace So Remarkable It Was Almost Ecstasy——anyone Who' Suffered Bad Pain And Then Recovered Will Know What I'm Talking About.

As It Happened, All Three Of Us Turned Out To Be Real Writers--a Coincidence Almost Too Large To Be Termed Mere Coincidence In A Society Where Literally Tens Of Thousands (maybe Hundreds Of Thousands) Of College Students Aspire To The Writer's Trade And Where Bare Hundreds Actually Break Through.

A Writer's Notebook Is The Best Way In The World To Immortalize Bad Ideas. My Idea About A Good Idea Is One That Sticks Around And Sticks Around And Sticks Around.

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

He Realized Now That A Lot Of The Problem Had Been His Own Mind, Which Was Usually Moving At A Speed Ten Or Twenty Times That Of His Classmates. They Had Thought Him Strange, Weird, Or Even Suicidal, Depending On The Escapade In Question, But Maybe It Had Been A Simple Case Of Mental Overdrive-if Anything About Being In Constant Mental Overdrive Was Simple. Anyway, It Was The Sort Of Thing You Got Under Control After A While-you Got It Under Control Or You Found Outlets For It.

Sooner Or Later Even The Fastest Runners Have To Stand And Fight.

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.

By Its Very Nature, Film Is Supposed To Be An Accessible Medium To Everybody.

Writing Fiction, Especially A Long Work Of Fiction, Can Be A Difficult, Lonely Job; It's Like Crossing The Atlantic Ocean In A Bathtub. There's Plenty Of Opportunity For Self-doubt.

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

Although Emotionally Delicate And Eminently Bruisable, Teenagers Are Short On Empathy. That Comes Later In Life, If It Comes At All.

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

He Lay Back, Put His Arm Over His Eyes, And Tried To Hold Onto The Anger, Because The Anger Made Him Feel Brave. A Brave Man Could Think. A Coward Couldn't.

She Couldn't Be On His Wavelength All The Time. That's All. When You Could Recognize That And Deal With It, You Were On Your Way To An Adult Relationship.

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

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.

Some Tears Have To Be Cried No Matter What The Hour- Until They Are, They Simply Rave And Burn Inside.

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

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.

So Do We Pass The Ghosts That Haunt Us Later In Our Lives; They Sit Undramatically By The Roadside Like Poor Beggars, And We See Them Only From The Corners Of Our Eyes, If We See Them At All. The Idea That They Have Been Waiting There For Us Rarely Crosses Our Minds. Yet They Do Wait, And When We Have Passed, They Gather Up Their Bundles Of Memory And Fall In Behind, Treading In Our Footsteps And Catching Up, Little By Little.

And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

You Learn Best By Reading A Lot And Writing A Lot, And The Most Valuable Lessons Of All Are The Ones You Teach Yourself.

I Was Sitting One Day And Thinking About Cannibalism, Because That's What Guys Like Me Do... And I Thought, Suppose A Guy Was Washed Up On A Rocky Island, How Much Of Himself Could He Eat?

You Cannot Friend A Hawk, They Said, Unless You Are A Hawk Yourself, Alone And Only A Sojourner In The Land, Without Friends Or The Need Of Them.

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

Don't Wait For The Muse. As I've Said, He's A Hardheaded Guy Who's Not Susceptible To A Lot Of Creative Fluttering. This Isn't The Ouija Board Or The Spirit-world We're Talking About Here, But Just Another Job Like Laying Pipe Or Driving Long-haul Trucks. Your Job Is To Make Sure The Muse Knows Where You're Going To Be Every Day From Nine 'til Noon. Or Seven 'til Three. If He Does Know, I Assure You That Sooner Or Later He'll Start Showing Up.

You Might Question A Winkle - A Feeling That Came To You Right Out Of The Blue - But You Didn’t Question Knowing.

Jake Went In, Aware That He Had, For The First Time In Three Weeks, Opened A Door Without Hoping Madly To Find Another World On The Other Side. A Bell Jingled Overhead. The Mild, Spicy Smell Of Old Books Hit Him, And The Smell Was Somehow Like Coming Home.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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