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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."

-Stephen King

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For Some Reason California's

Stephen King

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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."

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

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

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

Well, I'm Like A Drug Addict, I'm Always Saying I'm Going To Stop, And Then I Don't, What I've Said Consistently Is That I Hope I Know When To Stop: When It Starts To Get Repetitive.

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Not Writing Would Be Like Going The Rest Of Your Life Without Having Dreams.

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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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The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say

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Sarcastic People Tend To Be Marshmallows Underneath The Armor

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Remember, Hope Is A Good Thing, Maybe The Best Of Things, And No Good Thing Ever Dies.

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.

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?

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For A Moment He Felt A Wild Hope: Perhaps This Really Was A Nightmare. Perhaps He Would Awake In His Own Bed, Bathed In Sweat, Shaking, Maybe Even Crying . . . But Alive. Safe. Then He Pushed The Thought Away. Its Charm Was Deadly, Its Comfort Fatal.

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

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Why' Is A Crooked Letter And Can't Be Made Straight.

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Death Was No Less A Miracle Than Birth.

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The Best Show On Television Is Red Sox Baseball. Everything Else Sucks.

Even When Love Isn't Enough...somehow It Is.

Busy As A One Legged Man In An Ass Kicking Contest.

No Knowledge Obtained Without Risk

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

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Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

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

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Money Means I Can Support My Family And Still Do What I Love. Not Very Many People Can Say That In This World, And Not Many Writers Can Say That.

Good Books Are For Consideration After, Too.

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.

I Enjoy Going Back And Forth Between Plays And Novels. It`s Like Having A Wife And A Mistress. Books Are The Wife; Plays, The Mistress.

I Feel Better In My Mind Because I'm Doing What God Made Me To Do. He Said, 'go Write Books, Steve, And You'll Be Happy.' I'm Happy Now, And That Has Had An Effect On My Life And My Relationship With My Wife And Kids And Even My Friends. I've Always Wanted To Be A Writer.

We Fool Ourselves So Much We Could Do It For A Living.

The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

She Did Not Know If Her Gift Came From The Lord Of Light Or Of Darkness, And Now, Finally Finding That She Didn't Care Which, She Wad Overcome With Almost Indescribable Relief, As If A Huge Weight, Long Carried, Had Slipped From Her Shoulders.

Once I Fell In Love With Books, I Fell In Love Completely.

You Have To Stay Faithful To What You're Working On.

There's Something In Us That Is Very Much Attracted To Madness. Everyone Who Looks Off The Edge Of A Tall Building Has Felt At Least A Faint, Morbid Urge To Jump. And Anyone Who Has Ever Put A Loaded Pistol Up To His Head... All Right, My Point Is This: Even The Most Well-adjusted Person Is Holding Onto His Or Her Sanity By A Greased Rope. I Really Believe That. The Rationality Circuits Are Shoddily Built Into The Human Animal.

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Resistance To Change Is Proportional To How Much The Future Might Be Altered By Any Given Act.

If You Don't Have The Time To Read, You Don't Have The Time Or The Tools To Write.

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.

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

Some Guys-a Lot Of Guys-don't Believe What They Are Seeing, Especially If It Gets In The Way Of What They Want To Eat Or Drink Or Believe. Me, I Don't Believe In God. But If I Saw Him, I Would. I Wouldn't Just Go Around Saying, "jesus, That Was A Great Special Effect." The Definition Of An Asshole Is A Guy Who Doesn't Believe What He's Seeing.

We'll Just Have To Get Along. That's What People Do, You Know? They Just Get Along. And Try To Help Each Other.

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

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

The Idea That America Exists In A Culture Of Violence Is Bullshit. What America Exists In Is A Culture Of Kardashian.

It's Actually Against My Religion To Laugh At Men Who Are Toting Guns.

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There Had Never Been A Shortage Of Fools In The World

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

When You Sit Down To Write, Write. Don't Do Anything Else Except Go To The Bathroom, And Only Do That If It Absolutely Cannot Be Put Off.

It's Not The Pain I'm Afraid Of; I Know About The Pain. What I'm Afraid Of Is The End Of This Small, Sweet Dream.

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

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.

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Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

If I Kept Saying It; If I Kept Reaching Out. My Accident Really Taught Me Just One Thing: The Only Way To Go On Is To Go On. To Say 'i Can Do This' Even When You Know You Can't.

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.

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

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

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Haste Makes Waste

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

Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

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

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

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?

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

Where The World Ends Is Where You Must Begin

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Smoke And A Story's Just A Story

The Idea That Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time.

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.

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

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

It Was Like Drowning, Only From The Inside Out.

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

You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

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.

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

The Lord Is My Shepherd. I Shall Not Want For Nothing. He Makes Me Lie Down In The Green Pastures. He Greases Up My Head With Oil. He Gives Me Kung-fu In The Face Of My Enemies. Amen

Write What You Like, Then Imbue It With Life And Make It Unique By Blending In Your Own Personal Knowledge Of Life, Friendship, Relationships, Sex, And Work. Especially Work. People Love To Read About Work. God Knows Why, But They Do.

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

Writers Remember Everything...especially The Hurts. Strip A Writer To The Buff, Point To The Scars, And He'll Tell You The Story Of Each Small One. From The Big Ones You Get Novels. A Little Talent Is A Nice Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer, But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember The Story Of Every Scar. Art Consists Of The Persistence Of Memory.

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

The Horror Genre Is An Extremely Delicate Thing. You Can Talk To Filmmakers And Even Psychologists Who've Studied The Genre, And Even They Don't Understand What Works Or What Doesn't Work. More Importantly, They Don't Understand Why It Works When It Works.

Delicate Things

If The Stuff You're Writing Is Not For Yourself, It Won't Work.

Everything In Moderation. And That Includes A Couple Of Beers A Day.

They're Animals, All Right. But Why Are You So Goddam Sure That Makes Us Human Beings?

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

So Okay - There You Are In Your Room With The Shade Down And The Door Shut And The Plug Pulled Out Of The Base Of The Telephone. You've Blown Up Your Tv And Committed Yourself To A Thousand Words A Day, Come Hell Or High Water. Now Comes The Big Question: What Are You Going To Write About? And The Equally Big Answer: Anything You Damn Well Want.

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

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

I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

Time Is A Face On The Water.

But There's One Thing I'm Sure About. An Opening Line Should Invite The Reader To Begin The Story. It Should Say: Listen. Come In Here. You Want To Know About This.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter Is Populated With Vivid, Sympathetic Characters, And Driven By Terrors Both Human And Supernatural. It's The Kind Of Book That's Impossible To Put Down Once It Has Been Picked Up. It Kept Me Reading Far Into The Night. Straub Builds Otherworldly Terror Without Ever Losing Touch With His Attractive Cast Of Youngsters, Who Age Beautifully. Put This One High On Your List.

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.

I'm Not The First Person To Have Said This - No Writer Ever Feels That The Execution Of A Book Lives Up To The Idea For That Book. The Execution Always Falls Short.

I've Given Up Thinking - It Keeps Getting Me Into Trouble.

How To Draw A Picture (xii) Know When You're Finished, And When You Are, Put Your Pencil Or Your Paintbrush Down. All The Rest Is Only Life.

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

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."

Description Begins In The Writer’s Imagination, But Should Finish In The Reader’s.

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.

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

Friends Come In And Out Of Our Lives, Like Busboys In A Restaurant.

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.

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

The Year She Had Run Fleetly Through The Dewy Grass Under The Moon- The Night Of Wine, When Dreams Condensed Out Of Thin Air Like The Nightmilk Of Fantasy.

For Every Mother Who Ever Cursed God For Her Child Dead In The Road, For Every Father Who Ever Cursed The Man Who Sent Him Away From The Factory With No Job, For Every Child Who Was Ever Born To Pain And Asked Why, This Is The Answer. Our Lives Are Like These Things I Build. Sometimes They Fall Down For A Reason, Sometimes They Fall Down For No Reason At All.

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Stefanie Powers

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