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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.

-Stephen King

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Good Description Is A

Stephen King

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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.

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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.

No One Can Tell What Goes On In Between The Person You Were And The Person You Become. No One Can Chart That Blue And Lonely Section Of Hell. There Are No Maps Of The Change. You Just Come Out The Other Side. Or You Don't.

The Good Folks Mostly Win, Courage Usually Triumphs Over Fear, The Family Dog Hardly Ever Contracts Rabies: These Are Things I Knew At Twenty-five, And Things I Still Know Now, At The Age Of 25 X 2. But I Know Something Else As Well: There's A Place In Most Of Us Where The Rain Is Pretty Much Constant, The Shadows Are Always Long, And The Woods Are Full Of Monsters. It Is Good To Have A Voice In Which The Terrors Of Such A Place Can Be Articulated And Its Geography Partially Described, Without Denying The Sunshine And Clarity That Fill So Much Of Our Ordinary Lives. (viii)

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

Why Does Everyone Think That I Am A Cruel And Insensitive Man? I Mean, Come On, I Have Kids... On My Desk In Little Jars!

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

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.

All Right I Think We've Been Down Here In The Dark Long Enough. There's A Whole Other World Upstairs. Take My Hand Constant Reader And I'll Be Happy To Lead You Back Into The Sunshine. I'm Happy To Go There Because I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

I Always Drank, From When It Was Legal For Me To Drink. And There Was Never A Time For Me When The Goal Wasn't To Get As Hammered As I Could Possibly Afford To. I Never Understood Social Drinking, That's Always Seemed To Me Like Kissing Your Sister.

Shall There Be Truth Between Us, As Two Men? Not As Friends, But As Enemies And Equals?

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

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

Time Apparently Did Nothing But Blunt Grief’s Sharpest Edge So That It Hacked Rather Than Sliced.

I Can Remember As A College Student Writing Stories And Novels, Some Of Which Ended Up Getting Published And Some That Didn't. It Was Like My Head Was Going To Burst - There Were So Many Things I Wanted To Write All At Once. I Had So Many Ideas, Jammed Up. It Was Like They Just Needed Permission To Come Out.

I Think The Best Writers Are Voracious Readers Who Pick Up The Cadences And The Feel Of Narration Through A Number Of Different Books. And You Begin By Maybe Copying The Style Of Writers That Really Knocked You Out.

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

He Was One Of Those Quite Rare Adults Who Communicate With Small Children Fairly Well And Who Love Them All Impartially--not In A Sugary Way But In A Businesslike Fashion That May Sometimes Entail A Hug, In The Same Way That Closing A Big Business Deal May Call For A Handshake.

Lightning Flashed Dully Inside The Clouds On The Horizon Making Them Look As If They Had Fireflies Of Their Own, Monster Fireflies The Size Of Dinosaurs.

An Idea Is Like A Cold Germ: Sooner Or Later Someone Always Catches It.

Even People Capable Of Living In The Past Don't Really Know What The Future Holds.

There's A Saying - "write What You Know." It's Bad Advice If You Take It As An Unbreakable Rule, But Good Advice If You Use It As A Foundation.

If You Tell Yourself The Great Lie Of Bad Art-that You Are In Charge-your Chance At The Truth Will Be Lost. The Truth Isn't Always Pretty.

You Learned To Accept, Or You Ended Up In A Small Room Writing Letters Home With Crayolas.

...book-buyers Aren't Attracted, By And Large, By The Literary Merits Of A Novel: Book-buyers Want A Good Story...something That Will First Fascinate Them, Then Pull Them In And Keep Them Turning The Pages.

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.

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

Above All Else, Be Consistent.

You Know How It's Going To End, But Instead Of Spoiling Things, That Somehow Increases Your Fascination. It's Like Watching A Kid Run His Electric Train Faster And Faster And Waiting For It To Derail On One Of The Curves.

No One Can Be As Intellectually Slothful As A Really Smart Person

Like Anything Else That Happens On Its Own, The Act Of Writing Is Beyond Currency. Money Is Great Stuff To Have, But When It Comes To The Act Of Creation, The Best Thing Is Not To Think Of Money Too Much. It Constipates The Whole Process.

Life Was Such A Wheel That No Man Could Stand Upon It For Long. And It Always, At The End, Came Round To The Same Place Again.

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.

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.

I Work Until Beer O'clock.

I Guess When You Turn Off The Main Road, You Have To Be Prepared To See Some Funny Houses.

Only Children Tell The Whole Truth, You Know. That's What Makes Them Children.

The First Movie I Can Remember Seeing Was The Creature From The Black Lagoon. And, I Can Remember Hearing A Radio Play Of Ray Bradbury's Mars Is Heaven. And When I Cut My Teeth On Comic Books, They Were Not The Easy Ones Of Today Like Spiderman, Superman And The Hulk. They Were Tales Of The Crypt, The Vaultkeeper, And That Sort Of Thing.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

The Town Kept Its Secrets, And The Marsten House Brooded Over It Like A Ruined King.

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

A Man With A Good Wife Is The Luckiest Of God's Creatures.

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

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.

"you Need Hedges.""hedges," I Said, Bemused. "yes, Edgar." He Looked Surprised And A Little Disappointed, As If I Had Failed To Understand A Very Simple Concept. "hedges Against The Night."

I Write In The Mornings, In The Bright Daylight. But I Get Most Of My Good Ideas After The Sun Has Gone Down And The Dark Is On The Land.

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.

The Wife Whose Sweetly Given Reply In The Face Of Any Problem Would Be, "whatever You Think Is Best, Dear." Women, Take Note: A Wife Like That Never Needs To Fear Bubbling Away The Last Of Her Life Through A Cut Throat.

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.

And When There Are Enough Outsiders Together In One Place, A Mystic Osmosis Takes Place And You're Inside.

I Think We Rarely Recognize The Fifth Business In Our Lives At The Time Those People Are Changing Us.

Because Things Like This You Can Only Ssay Once. And You Either Get It Wrong Or Right, It's The End Either Way, Because It's Too Hard To Ever Try To Say Again.

If You Intend To Write As Truthfully As You Can, Your Days As A Member Of Polite Society Are Numbered, Anyway... You Must Be Prepared To Do Some Serious Turning Inward Toward The Life Of The Imagination, And That Means, I'm Afraid, That Geraldo, Keith Obermann, And Jay Leno Must Go. Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

Jesus Watches From The Wall, But His Face Is Cold As Stone, And If He Loves Me As She Tells Me Why Do I Feel So All Alone?

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.

Teaching School Is Like Having Jumper Cables Hooked To Your Brain, Draining All The Juice Out Of You.

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.

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.

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

We All Do What We Can, And It Has To Be Good Enough, And If It Isn't Good Enough, It Has To Do.

It's A Tough Life If You Don't Weaken.

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

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.

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.

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

Rightly Tired Of The Pain İ Hear And Feel, Boss... Where We's Comin From Or Goin To Or Why... If İ Could End It, İ Would. But İ Can't.

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.

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

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

Horror Movies Often Work Better When We Have A Stake In The Game. The More We Care About The Characters, The More Human They Are To Us, The More Appealing They Are To Us And The More Effective The Horror Tends To Be.

Everyone Needs A Hobby, He Said. And Everyone Needs A Miracle Or Two, Just To Prove Life Is More Than Just One Long Trudge From The Cradle To The Grave.

I Always Felt That Organized Religion Was Just Basically A Theological Insurance Scam Where They're Saying If You Spend Time With Us, Guess What, You're Going To Live Forever, You're Going To Go To Some Other Plain Where You're Going To Be So Happy, You'll Just Be Happy All The Time, Which Is Also Kind Of A Scary Idea To Me.

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

For," I Said, "a Murdered Man Or Woman Dies Not In God's Time, But In Man's. He... Or She... Is Cut Short Before He... Or She... Can Atone For Sin, And So All Errors Must Be Forgiven. When You Think Of It That Way, All Murderers Are A Gateway For Heaven.

Long Days And Pleasant Nights

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.

Only Enemies Speak The Truth; Friends And Lovers Lie Endlessly, Caught In The Web Of Duty.

And Now, All These Years Later, It Seem To Him That The Most Horrible Fact Of Human Existence Was That Broken Hearts Mended

I Think We'd All Like To Believe That After We Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil, That There's Going To Be Something On The Other Side Because For Most Of Us, I Know For Me, Life Is So Rich, So Colorful And Sensual And Full Of Good Things, Things To Read, Things To Eat, Things To Watch, Places To Go, New Experiences, That I Don't Want To Think That You Just Go To Darkness.

New Experiences

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

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.

This Was The Darker Life, Where Every Truth Was Written Backward.

The Last Good Time Always Comes, And When You See The Darkness Creeping Toward You, You Hold On To What Was Bright And Good. You Hold On For Dear Life.

If You Don’t Have The Time To Do Something Right, Where Are You Going To Find The Time To Fix It?

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

How Life Did Imitate Art Sometimes. And The Cruder The Art, The Closer The Imitation.

Showrunning Is A Thing Where You Have To Work With Tons Of Different People. You Have To Schmooze People, You Have To Talk To Network People. I Don't Want To Do Any Of That.

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

But It's Writing, Damn It, Not Washing The Car Or Putting On Eyeliner. If You Can Take It Seriously, We Can Do Business. If You Can't Or Won't, It's Time For You To Close The Book And Do Something Else. Wash The Car, Maybe.

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.

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.

How Many Have To Die Before We Will Give Up These Dangerous Toys?

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

I've Been Typed As A Horror Writer, And 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."

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

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

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.

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.

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

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.

It's The Pool Where We All Go Down To Drink, To Swim, To Catch A Little Fish From The Edge Of The Shore; It's Also The Pool Where Some Hardy Souls Go Out In Their Flimsy Wooden Boats After The Big Ones. It Is The Pool Of Life, The Cup Of Imagination, And She Has An Idea That Different People See Different Versions Of It, But With Two Things Ever In Common: It's Always About A Mile Deep In The Fairy Forest, And It's Always Sad. Because Imagination Isn't The Only Thing This Place Is About.

Wendy? Darling? Light, Of My Life. I'm Not Gonna Hurt Ya. I'm Just Going To Bash Your Brains In.

I Can't See The Future, But It's Grim. The Depletion Of Resources - We're Living In This Dine-and-dash Economy.

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

Life Turns On A Dime. Sometimes Towards Us, But More Often It Spins Away, Flirting And Flashing As It Goes: So Long, Honey, It Was Good While It Lasted, Wasn’t It?

When Creative People Do Their Best Work, They're Hardly Ever In Charge, They're Just Sort Of Rolling Along With Their Eyes Shut Yelling Wheee.

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.

Wherever You Write Is Supposed To Be A Little Bit Of A Refuge, A Place Where You Can Get Away From The World. The More Closed In You Are, The More You're Forced Back On Your Own Imagination.

It Might Be That The Biggest Division In The World Isn't Men And Women But Folks Who Like Cats And Folks Who Like Dogs" - (l.t.'s Theory Of Pets)

Human Beings Have Got A Lot Of Good, Noble Impulses Inside Them, And Most People Want To Be Good And Do More Good Than They Do Evil. Hell, We've Had Nuclear Weapons Now For Thirty Or Thirty-five Years And Nothing's Happened Yet. That In Itself Seems To Be A Miracle. If Reagan Pushes The Button Or Somebody Pushes The Button In Russia Or Somebody Pushes It In Costa Rica, They Can Put A Big Tombstone In Outer Space That Says, "we Gave It A Good Try." Because We Have.

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

The Wonder Is That So Many Ocds Manage To Live Productive Lives, Just The Same. They Work, They Eat (often Not Enough Or Too Much, It's True), They Go To The Movies, They Make Love To Their Girlfriends And Boyfriends, Their Wives And Husbands... And All The Time Those Birds Are There, Clinging To Them And Pecking Away Little Bits Of Flesh.

Productive Life

Show Me A Man Or A Woman Alone And I'll Show You A Saint. Give Me Two And They'll Fall In Love. Give Me Three And They'll Invent The Charming Thing We Call 'society'. Give Me Four And They'll Build A Pyramid. Give Me Five And They'll Make One An Outcast. Give Me Six And They'll Reinvent Prejudice. Give Me Seven And In Seven Years They'll Reinvent Warfare. Man May Have Been Made In The Image Of God, But Human Society Was Made In The Image Of His Opposite Number, And Is Always Trying To Get Back Home.

Falling In Love

It Hurts To Imagine Stuff. It Can Give You A Headache. Probably Doesn't Hurt Physically, But It Hurts Mentally. But The More That You Can Do It, The More You're Able To Get Out Of It. Everybody Has That Capacity, But I Don't Think Everyone Develops It.

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

Keeping Secrets

...belief Has A Second Edge. If There Are Ten Thousand Medieval Peasants Who Create Vampires By Believing Them Real, There May Be One - Probably A Child - Who Will Imagine The Stake Necessary To Kill It. But A Stake Is Only Stupid Wood; The Mind Is The Mallet Which Drives It Home.

Of Course They Had More Chains On Him Than Scrooge Saw On Marley's Ghost, But He Could Have Kicked Up Dickens If He'd Wanted. That's A Pun, Son.

I Still Believe In The Resilience Of The Human Heart And The Essential Validity Of Love;i Still Believe That Connections Between People Can Be Made And That The Spirits Which Inhabit Us Sometimes Touch. I Still Believe That The Cost Of These Connections Is Horribly, Outrageously High... And I Still Believe That The Value Received Far Outweighs The Price Which Must Be Paid. (from Introductory Notes.)

I Think That Marijuana Should Not Only Be Legal, I Think It Should Be A Cottage Industry. It Would Be Wonderful For The State Of Maine. There's Some Pretty Good Homegrown Dope. I'm Sure It Would Be Even Better If You Could Grow It With Fertilizers And Have Greenhouses.

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.

One Night When My Longing For Her Was Like A Fire Burning Out Of Control In My Heart And My Head, I Wrote Her A Letter That Just Seemed To Go On And On. I Poured Out My Whole Heart In It, Never Looking Back To See What I'd Said Because I Was Afraid Cowardice Would Make Me Stop. I Didn't Stop, And When A Voice In My Head Clamored That It Would Be Madness To Mail Such A Letter, That I Would Be Giving Her My Naked Heart To Hold In Her Hand, I Ignored It With A Child's Breathless Disregard Of The Consequences.

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

It's A Mystery. That's The First Thing That Interests Me About The Idea Of God. If There Is One, It's Mysterious And Powerful And Awesome To Even Consider The Concept, And You Have To Take It Seriously.

It Wasn't Just Love That Held People Together. There Was Secrets, And The Price You Paid To Keep Them.

We Either Learn To Accept Or We End Up Writing Letters Home With Crayons.

When The Time Is Gone, You Can Never Get It Back.

Why Don't We All Just Go Crazy When We Know Were Going To Croak? Because The Mind's A Monkey. You Put Things In Departments And You Go Ahead. You Go On And Plan For The Future And Assume That The Future's Going To Work Out Okay. Yet We Know That Sooner Or Later We're All Going To Be Eating Worms, Whether It's Fifty Years Or Sixty. It Might Be Tomorrow. It Might Happen Today.

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Even Despair - The Sense That You Can Never Completely Put On The Page What's In Your Mind And Heart. You Can Come To The Act With Your Fists Clenched And Your Eyes Narrowed, Ready To Kick Ass And Take Down Names. You Can Come To It Because You Want A Girl To Marry You Or Because You Want To Change The World. Come To It Any Way But Lightly. Let Me Say It Again: You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

He Had A Massive Stroke. He Died With His Tie On. Do You Think That Could Be Our Generation's Equivalent Of That Old Saying About Dying With Your Boots On?

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

When I Was A Kid I Believed Everything I Was Told, Everything I Read, And Every Dispatch Sent Out By My Own Overheated Imagination. This Made For More Than A Few Sleepless Nights, But It Also Filled The World I Lived In With Colors And Textures I Would Not Have Traded For A Lifetime Of Restful Nights.

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.

The Boat Dipped And Swayed And Sometimes Took On Water, But It Did Not Sink; The Two Brothers Had Waterproofed It Well. I Do Not Know Where It Finally Fetched Up, If It Ever Did; Perhaps It Reached The Sea And Sails There Forever, Like A Magic Boat In A Fairytale. All I Know Is That It Was Still Afloat And Still Running On The Breast Of The Flood When It Passed The Incorporated Town Limits Of Derry, Maine, And There It Passes Out Of This Tale Forever.

Without Story Books Is Like A Person With No Soul.

Art Is The Concrete Artifact Of Faith And Expectation, The Realization Of A World That Would Otherwise Be Little More Than A Veil Of Pointless Consciousness Stretched Over A Gulf Of Mystery.

It's Funny How Close The Past Is, Sometimes. Sometimes It Seems As If You Could Almost Reach Out And Touch It. Only Who Really Wants To?

Little By Little, Writers Develop Their Own Styles, Each As Unique As A Fingerprint.

Acknowledge Your Good Fortune By Sharing It.

Guys Like Henry And His Buddies Were An Accident Waiting To Happen; The Little Kids' Version Of Floods Or Tornadoes Or Gallstones.

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.

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

What's Been Tried Once Had Been Tried Once Before... And Before... And Before...

Yet Suppose Further. Suppose That All Worlds, All Universes, Met At A Single Nexus, A Single Pylon, A Tower. And Within It, A Stairway, Perhaps Rising To The Godhead Itself. Would You Dare Climb To The Top, Gunslinger? Could It Be That Somewhere Above All Of Endless Reality, There Exists A Room?...' You Dare Not.' And In The Gunslinger's Mind, Those Words Echoed: You Dare Not.

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

The Multiple Choices Of Possibilities Of Daily Life Are The Music We Dance To.

Multiple Choice

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.

When Asked, 'how Do You Write?' I Invariably Answer, 'one Word At A Time.'

When Machines Fail, When Technology Fails, When The Conventional Religion Fails, People Have Got To Have Something. Even A Zombin Lurching Through The Night Can Seem Pretty Cheerful Compared To The Existential Comedy/horror Of The Ozone Layer Dissolving Under The Combined Assult Of A Million Flurocarbon Spray Cans Of Deoderant." - The Mist

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

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."

I Can't Understand Why People Use Religion To Hurt Each Other When There's Already So Much Pain In The World.

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

Maybe That's Why God Made Us Kids First And Built Us Close To The Ground, Because He Knows You Got To Fall Down A Lot And Bleed A Lot Before You Learn That One Simple Lesson. You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

When You're Five And You Hurt, You Make A Big Noise In The World. At Ten You Whimper. But By The Time You Make Fifteen You Begin To Eat The Poisoned Apples That Grow On Your Own Inner Tree Of Pain.

A Cowardly Leader Is The Most Dangerous Of Men.

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.

Do Any Men Grow Up Or Do They Only Come Of Age?

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.

Your First Impulse Is To Share Good News, Your Second Is To Club Someone With It.

Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

Faith Is A Great Thing, And Really Religious People Would Like Us To Believe That Faith And Knowing Are The Same Thing, But I Don't Believe That Myself. Because There Are Too Many Different Ideas On The Subject. What We Know Is This: When We Die, One Of Two Things Happens. Either Our Souls And Thoughts Somehow Survive The Experience Of Dying Or They Don't. If They Do, That Opens Up Every Possibility You Could Think Of. If They Don't, It's Just Blotto. The End.

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.

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

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

Where The World Ends Is Where You Must Begin

The Shining. It Was A Good Name, A Comforting Name, Because She Had Always Thought Of It As A Dark Thing.

Nora Roberts Is Cool.

I Wouldn't Have Missed A Single Minute Of It, Not For The Whole World.

When All Else Fails, Give Up And Go To The Library.

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.

A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It. You Prime A Pump With Your Own Water, You Work The Handle With Your Own Strength. You Do This Because You Expect To Get Back More Than You Give.

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.

You Could Not Turn Off Love- Even The Rather Absent, Sometimes Taken For Granted Love- The Way You'd Turn Off A Faucet. Love Ran From The Heart And The Heart Had It's Own Imperatives

The Real Importance Of Reading Is That It Creates An Ease & Intimacy With The Process Of Writing... It Also Offers You A Constantly Growing Knowledge Of What Has Been Done And What Hasn't, What Is Trite And What Is Fresh, What Works And What Lies There Dying (or Dead) On The Page. The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

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

Isn't It Too Bad That The Great Truths Are All Such Lies.

It Is, After All, The Dab Of Grit That Seeps Into An Oyster's Shell That Makes The Pearl, Not Pearl-making Seminars With Other Oysters.

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.

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

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

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.

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

On The Day Of My Judgment, When I Stand Before God, And He Asks Me Why Did I Kill One Of His True Miracles, What Am I Gonna Say? That It Was My Job? My Job?

Life Isn't Always A Butcher's Game. Sometimes The Prizes Are Real. Sometimes They're Precious.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

C-c-can You Get Bones In Your Buh-buh-brain?' Bill Asked. This Was Turning Into The Most Interesting Conversation He'd Had In Weeks.

Interesting Conversation

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?

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've Said It Before, And I'll Say It Again. When You Find Something At Which You Have Talent, You Do That Thing (what Ever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Pop Out Of Your Head.

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.

The Most Important Things To Remember About Back Story Are That (a) Everyone Has A History And (b) Most Of It Isn’t Very Interesting.

No One Likes To See A Government Folder With His Name On It.

Because The Hardest Boss A Man Can Ever Have Is Himself.

My Friend Wants To Get Moving And So Do I,' Eddie Said. 'we've Got Miles To Go Yet.' I Know That. It's On Your Face, Son. Like A Scar.' Eddie Was Fascinated By The Idea Of Duty And Ka As Something That Left A Mark, Something That Might Look Like Decoration To One Eye And Disfigurement To Another. Outside, Thunder Cracked And Lightning Flashed.

Working With Him Was Sort Of Like Trying To Defuse A Bomb With Somebody Standing Behind You And Every Now And Then Clashing A Pair Of Cymbals Together. In A Word, Upsetting.

...for The First Time In My Life, Writing Was Hard. The Problem Was The Teaching...by Most Friday Afternoons I Felt As If I'd Spent The Week With Jumper Cables Clamped To My Brain.

Marriage Is Referred To In The Bible As “mystical Union,” And It Really Is In The Sense That Two People Who Don’t Know Each Other Get Together. I’m Always Interested In How Much You Find Out About The Other Person And How Much You Don’t Find Out.

The Rope By Which The Great Blocks Of Taxes Are Attached To Any Citizenry Is Simple Loyalty.

And I Believe Happiness Is The Exact Opposite Of Sadness, Bitterness, And Hatred: Happiness Should Remain Unexamined As Long As Possible.

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

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