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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.

-Stephen King

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He Needs To Be

Stephen King

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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.

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But I Think There Are A Set Of Experiences That Turn A Potential Writer Into A Working Writer, And Then There Are Places In Your Life Were You Start To Recognize What You Want To Do.

Places In Your Life

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.

It's How We See The World That Keeps The Darkness Beyond At Bay. Keeps It From Pouring Through And Devouring Us. I Think All Of Us Might Know That, Way Down Deep.

Superhero Movies And Comic Books Teach A Lesson That Runs Directly Counter To The Culture-of-violence Idea: Guns Are For Bad Guys Too Cowardly To Fight Like Men.

Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

Support Systems

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them.

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

Talent Renders The Whole Idea Of Rehearsal Meaningless; When You Find Something At Which You Are Talented, You Do It (whatever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Are Ready To Fall Out Of Your Head. Even When No One Is Listening (or Reading Or Watching), Every Outing Is A Bravura Performance, Because You As The Creator Are Happy. Perhaps Even Ecstatic.

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

When I Gave Up Dope And Alcohol, My Immediate Feeling Was 'i've Saved My Life, But There'll Be A Price Because I'll Have Nothing That Buzzes Me Any More'. But I Enjoyed My Kids. My Wife Loved Me And I Loved Her. And Eventually The Writing Came Back And I Discovered That The Writing Was Enough. Stupid Thing Is That Probably It Always Had Been.

So Where Do The Ideas-the Salable Ideas-come From? They Come From My Nightmares. Not The Night-time Variety, As A Rule, But The Ones That Hide Just Beyond The Doorway That Separates The Conscious From The Unconscious.

For Men, I Think, Love Is A Thing Formed Of Equal Parts Lust And Astonishment. The Astonishment Part Women Understand. The Lust Part They Only Think They Understand.

Being Sorry For Myself Is A Luxury I Can't Afford.

I Don't Have Nightmares; I Give Them All To You.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I'm Not Making An Enemy; I'm Keepin' One.

You're Dead, George. You Just Don't Have The Sense To Lie Down.

I Want To Engage The Reader. I'm An Emotional Writer, In The Sense That I Would Be Happy If You Re-read A Book For The Intellectual Or The Mental Part Of It, But, The First Time, I Just Like To Reach Out And Grab You, Pull You In.

But You Don't Do It. Because Guys Like Us, Red, We Know There's A Third Choice. An Alternative To Staying Simon-pure Or Bathing In The Filth And The Slime. It's The Alternative That Grown-ups All Over The World Pick. You Balance Off Your Walk Through The Hog-wallow Against What It Gains You. You Choose The Lesser Of Two Evils And Try To Keep Your Good Intentions In Front Of You. And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

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.

She Knew With Suddeness And Ease That This Moment Would Be With Her Always, Within Hand's Reach Of Memory. She Doubted If They All Sensed It - They Had Seen The World - But Even George Was Silent For A Minute As They Looked, And The Scene, The Smell, Even The Sound Of The Band Playing A Faintly Recognisable Movie Theme, Was Locked Forever In Her, And She Was At Peace.

French Is The Language That Turns Dirt Into Romance.

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.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open.

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

The Only Religions I Don't Like Are The Ones That Insist Their God Is Bigger Than Your God.

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

And This Wasn’t Lying, Not Really. It Was Leaving Out.

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.

Kindle, Isn’t It?” The Waitress Asked. “i Got One For Christmas, And I Love It. I’m Reading My Way Through All Of Jodi Picoult’s Books.” “oh, Probably Not All Of Them,” Wesley Said. “huh? Why Not?” “she’s Probably Got Another One Done Already. That’s All I Meant.” “and James Patterson’s Probably Written One Since He Got Up This Morning!” She Said, And Went Off Chortling.

Gordie: Do You Think I'm Weird? Chris: Definitely. Gordie: No Man, Seriously. Am I Weird? Chris: Yeah, But So What? Everybody's Weird

What I'd Show You Is Much More Bizarre Than Anything We Have Looked At So Far, And I Warn You In Advance That The First Impulse Will Be To Laugh. That's All Right. Laugh If You Must. Just Don't Take Your Eye Off What You See, For Even In Your Imagination, Here Is A Creature Who Can Do You Damage.

The Essential And Defining Characteristic Of Childhood Is Not The Effortless Merging Of Dream And Reality, But Only Alienation. There Are No Words For Childhood's Dark Turns And Exhalations. A Wise Child Recognizes It And Submits To The Necessary Consequences. A Child Who Counts The Cost Is A Child No Longer.

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

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

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.

Somebody Said The Prospect Of Eminent Death Has A Wonderful Clarifying Effect On The Mind. And I Don't Know If That's True, But I Do Think It Probably Causes Some Changes, Some Evolution In The Way A Person Works. But On A Day-by-day Basis, I Just Still Enjoy Doing What I'm Doing.

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

Writing Is Seduction. Good Talk Is Part Of Seduction. If Not So, Why Do So Many Couples Who Start The Evening At Dinner Wind Up In Bed?

The Town Has A Sense, Not Of History, But Of Time, And The Telephone Poles Seem To Know This. If You Lay Your Hand Against One, You Can Feel The Vibration From The Wires Deep Within The Wood, As If Souls Had Been Imprisoned In There And Were Struggling To Get Out.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Must Do Two Things Above All Others: Read A Lot And Write A Lot. There's No Way Around These Two Things That I'm Aware Of, No Shortcut.

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

Most Gothics Are Overplotted Novels Whose Success Or Failure Hinges On The Author's Ability To Make You Believe In The Characters And Partake Of The Mood.

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

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

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.

The Wind Makes You Ache Is Some Place That Is Deeper Than Your Bones. It May Be That It Touches Something Old In The Human Soul, A Chord Of Race Memory That Says Migrate Or Die - Migrate Or Die.

He Killed Them With Their Love.

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.

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.

...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.

And As A Writer, One Of The Things That I've Always Been Interested In Doing Is Actually Invading Your Comfort Space. Because That's What We're Supposed To Do. Get Under Your Skin, And Make You React.

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

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.

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

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

Semi-automatic S Have Only Two Purposes. One Is So Owners Can Take Them To The Shooting Range Once In A While, Yell Yeehaw, And Get All Horny At The Rapid Fire And The Burning Vapor Spurting From The End Of The Barrel. Their Other Use-their Only Other Use-is To Kill People.

He Sat Upon His Throne, Which Is Made Of Skulls.

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.

No, It's Not A Very Good Story - Its Author Was Too Busy Listening To Other Voices To Listen As Closely As He Should Have To The One Coming From Inside.

Listening To Others

If You Were Seeing A Lot Of Horseshit, There Had To Be A Pony In The Vicinity.

She Felt Like Someone Who Drowns Remembering What It Was Like To Still Be On The Boat, So Calm And At Ease, So Carelessly Safe

Schizoid Behavior Is A Pretty Common Thing In Children. It's Accepted, Because All We Adults Have This Unspoken Agreement That Children Are Lunatics.

I Believe There Is An Unseen World All Around Us.

As Infants, Our First Victory Comes In Grasping Some Bit Of The World, Usually Our Mother's Fingers. Later We Discover That The World, And The Things Of The World, Are Grasping Us, And Have Been All Along.

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 Poets, In My View, And I Think The View Of Most People, Do Speak God's Language - It's Better, It's Finer, It's Language On A Higher Plane Than Ordinary People Speak In Their Daily Lives.

Poe Was The First Writer To Write About Main Characters Who Were Bad Guys Or Who Were Mad Guys, And Those Are Some Of My Favorite Stories.

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

But I Believe In Love, You Know; Love Is A Uniquely Portable Magic. I Don’t Think It’s In The Stars, But I Do Believe That Blood Calls To Blood And Mind Calls To Mind And Heart To Heart.

I Work Until Beer O'clock.

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

...writing Fiction...is No Job For Intellectual Cowards.

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.

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.

People With A High Tolerance For Boredom Can Get A Lot Of Thinking Done.

Kids, Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie, And The Truth Of This Fiction Is Simple Enough: The Magic Exists.

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.

Remember That 'plumber In Space' Is Not Such A Bad Setup For A Story.

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.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

Parenting Is The Greatest Of Hum-a-few-bars-and-i'll-fake-it Skills.

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

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

Dark Tower Series

Death Was No Less A Miracle Than Birth.

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.

I Don't Want To Sound Like An Ad, A Public Service Ad On Tv, But The Fact Is If You Can Read, You Can Walk Into A Job Later On. If You Don't, Then You've Got, The Army, Iraq, I Don't Know, Something Like That. It's, It's Not As Bright. So, That's My Little Commercial For That.

Advertising Tends To Be Most Effective In Jogging Finally Into Action Those People Who Are Well-enough Disposed Towards A Product, But Have Not Yet Got Around To Buying It.

Death Is A Mystery, And Burial Is A Secret.

The Only Leverage The Manufacturer Can Apply To The Retailer Is His Relationship With The Consumer. And The Main Element In Profit Growth Is Going To Have To Lie In Making His Brand More Valuable To The Retailer, Through Its Being More Valuable To The Consumer. And That Means His Brand Must Be Unique, It Must Have No Adequate Direct Substitutes - Because It Is In This, After All, That Value Lies.

See The Bear Of Fearsome Size! All The World's Within His Eyes. Time Grows Thin, The Past Is A Riddle; The Tower Awaits You In The Middle.

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

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.

In Polite Society, We Call Our Obsessions Hobbies.

For Me, Good Description Usually Consists Of A Few Well-chosen Details That Will Stand For Everything Else.

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

Do You Believe In An Afterlife?" The Gunslinger Asked Him As Brown Dropped Three Ears Of Hot Corn Onto His Plate. Brown Nodded. "i Think This Is It.

I Hated School. I Don't Trust Anybody Who Looks Back On The Years From 14 To 18 With Any Enjoyment. If You Liked Being A Teenager, There's Something Really Wrong With You.

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.

You've Got To Do Something To Fill Up Your Day. And I Can Only Play So Much Guitar And Watch So Many Tv Shows. It Fulfills Me. There Are Two Things About It I Like: It Makes Me Happy, And It Makes Other People Happy.

Writing's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

Hearts Can Break. Yes, Hearts Can Break. Sometimes I Think It Would Be Better If We Died When They Did, But We Don't.

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.

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

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.

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 We Don't Have Each Other, We Go Crazy With Loneliness. When We Do, We Go Crazy With Togetherness.

I Wanted To Write A Balls-to-the-wall Supernatural Horror Story, Something I Haven't Done In A Long Time.

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.

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

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.

Hapscomb's Texaco Sat On Number 93 Just North Of Arnette, A Pissant Four-street Burg About 110 Miles From Houston.

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

She Looks Like The Type That Might Freak Out. It's Something In The Eyes, Frannie. It Says If You Shoot My Sacred Cows, I'll Shoot Yours.

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

I Know Life Is Hard, I Think Everyone Knows That In Their Hearts, But Why Dos It Have To Be Cruel, As Well? Why Does It Have To Bite?

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

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

Writing Is Not Life, But I Think That Sometimes It Can Be A Way Back To Life.

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.

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

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

Terror. When You Come Home And Notice Everything You Own Has Been Taken Away And Replaced By An Exact Substitute. It’s When The Lights Go Out And You Feel Something Behind You-you Hear It-you Feel Its Breath Against Your Ear, But When You Turn Around There’s Nothing There.

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.

People Seem To Think There's A Magic Formula To Writing, I Just Write 1 Word At A Time.

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

City Life Is No Life For A Country Man; For Such A Man That Life Is A Kind Of Damnation In Itself.

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.

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

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.

I Was In Enough To Get Along With People. I Was Never Socially Inarticulate. Not A Loner. And That Saved My Life, Saved My Sanity. That And The Writing. But To This Day I Distrust Anybody Who Thought School Was A Good Time. Anybody.

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.

When I Knew I Was Going To Be Able To Write Full Time, I Wondered, "what's Going To Happen To The Relationships Within My Family?" Are They Going To Change? Is It Going To Be The Kind Of Deal Where You Say, "i Can't Take This! Get Me Out Of Here! I Can't Stand These Screaming Kids!" The Way It Turned Out Was, I Was Able To Change The Diapers Okay, After I Stuck The Pin Through My Fingers A Few Times. I Had A Dawning Realization That Children Are Not Particularly Hard To Deal With.

It's Best To Be Ruthless With The Past.

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.

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?

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

I Like To End Stories Where The Readers Have A Little Room To Run. They Can Resolve Things As They Like In Their Own Mind.

I Believe These Stories Exist Because We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives: The Parent Who Punches Instead Of Kissing, The Auto Accident That Takes A Loved One, The Cancer We One Day Discover Living In Our Own Bodies. If Such Terrible Occurrences Were Acts Of Darkness, They Might Actually Be Easier To Cope With. But Instead Of Being Dark, They Have Their Own Terrible Brilliance. . . And None Shine So Bright As The Acts Of Cruelty We Sometimes Perpetrate In Our Own Families.

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

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

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

God Turned Out To Be A Bunch Of Bad Little Kids Playing Interstellar Xbox. Isn't That Funny?

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!

The Scariest Moment Is Always Just Before You Start.

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.

Overhead Was A Sky Blacker Than Jewlers' Velvet, And A Billion Stars Screamed Down.

A Little Arrogance (or Even A Lot) Isn't Such A Bad Thing, Although Your Mother Undoubtedly Told You Different. Mine Did. "pride Goeth Before A Fall, Stephen", She Said... And Then I Found Out - Right Around The Age That Is 19 X 2 - That Eventually You Fall Down, Anyway.

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 Like To Get Ten Pages A Day, Which Amounts To 2,000 Words. That’s 180,000 Words Over A Three-month Span, A Goodish Length For A Book — Something In Which The Reader Can Get Happily Lost, If The Tale Is Done Well And Stays Fresh.

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

Nobody Lives Forever, But We All Shine On.

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

As A Rule, I Don't Worry About Genre. I Just Want To Tell A Good Story, With Characters That Interest Me And My Readers.

Roland Could Not Understand Why Anyone Would Want Cocaine Or Any Other Illegal Drug, For That Matter, In A World Where Such A Powerful One As Sugar Was So Plentiful And Cheap.

Reading A Good Long Novel Is In Many Ways Like Having A Long And Satisfying Affair

By And Large... The Good's An Illusion, Little Fables Folks Tell Themselves So They Can Get Through Their Days Without Screaming Too Much.

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."

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.

The Great Thing About Writing Is That...you Can Do All These Antisocial Things And You Get Paid For Them And Nobody Ever Arrests You Because They're All Make-believe. Then That Way If You Were Actually Ever Driven To Do Any Of Those Things, The Pressure's Off Because You'd Have Already Written Them Down. It's Therapy.

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

Good Books Are For Consideration After, Too.

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

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.

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

After The 9/11 Apocalypse Happened In New York City, People, Particularly New Yorkers, Who Breathed In The Ash, Or Saw The Results Of That, Have A Tendency To Keep Seeing Echoes And Having Flashbacks To It.

Beating Heroin Is Child's Play Compared To Beating Your Childhood.

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

Writers Are Often The Worst Judges Of What They Have Written.

I Tend To Scare Myself.

Superstition, Like True Love, Needs Time To Grow And Reflect Upon Itself.

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.

I Did A Couple Of Writing Seminars In Canada With High School Kids. These Were The Bright Kids; They All Have Computers, But They Can't Spell. Because Spell-check Won't [help] You If You Don't Know Through From Threw. I Told Them, "if You Can Read In The 21st Century, You Own The World." Because You Learn To Write From Reading.

Home Is Watching The Moon Rise Over The Open, Sleeping Land And Having Someone You Can Call To The Window, So You Can Look Together. Home Is Where You Dance With Others, And Dancing Is Life.

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

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?

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

Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

I Like To Write Short Stories More Because I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy. And A Short Story Is, By Its Very Definition, Short. It Is Something That Generally You Can Turn Out In A Week To Two Weeks Depending On How Well It Goes For You. But, At The Same Time, It Gives The Same Satisfaction Of Creating A Complete World.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

I Don't Want To Speak Too Disparagingly Of My Generation (actually I Do, We Had A Chance To Change The World But Opted For The Home Shopping Network Instead).

So What He Supposed To Do? Grab Bobbie's Ax And Make Like Jack Nicholson In The Shinning? He Could See It. Smash, Crash, Bash: Heeeeeeere's Gardener!

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.

Memories Are Contrary Things; If You Quit Chasing Them And Turn Your Back, They Often Return On Their Own.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

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

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.

Friends Don’t Spy; True Friendship Is About Privacy, Too.

True Friendship

Formula: Second Draft = First Draft Minus 10%.

I Know Your Mother Lives In Your Head - Almost Everyone's Mother Does, I Guess - But You Can't Let Her Have Her Way On This One

Twas Something Else. I Had Come To Hate Her, You See. I Had Come To Wish Her Dead, And That Was What Held Me Back.

I Don't Have Anything Against Either Of The Dead Movies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, None Of Those Movies. If It Scares Somebody, I Think That It Is Serving A Valid Purpose. It Is Doing What The Filmmaker Intended. But, It Is Not Something That You Hand To Kids.

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

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.

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

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.

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Chelsea Handler

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