Background Image

...

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.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

How Do We Remember

Stephen King

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Stephen King

Like All Sweet Dreams, It Will Be Brief, But Brevity Makes Sweetness, Doesn't It?

A Great Whispering Noise Began To Rise In The Woods On Either Side Of The Tracks, As If The Forest Had Just Noticed We Were There And Was Commenting On It.

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.

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

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

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

When You Write You Tell Yourself A Story. When You Rewrite You Take Out Everything That Is Not The Story.

Writers Must Be Fair And Remember Even Bad Guys (most Of Them, Anyway) See Themselves As Good—they Are The Heroes Of Their Own Lives. Giving Them A Fair Chance As Characters Can Create Some Interesting Shades Of Gray—and Shades Of Gray Are Also A Part Of Life.

You Know, Small Children Take It As A Matter Of Course That Things Will Change Every Day And Grown-ups Understand That Things Change Sooner Or Later And Their Job Is To Keep Them From Changing As Long As Possible. It’s Only Kids In High School Who Are Convinced They’re Never Going To Change. There’s Always Going To Be A Pep Rally And There’s Always Going To Be A Spectator Bus, Somewhere Out There In Their Future.

I Always Like To See Enlightened Parents Like That; It Gives Me Hope For The Future.

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.

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.

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

I Start Work Around 8 A.m. And Usually Finish Around Noon. If There's More To Do, I Do It In The Late Afternoon, Although That Isn't Prime Time For Me.

You Are The Grim, Goal-oriented Ones Who Will Not Believe That The Joy Is In The Journey Rather Than The Destination No Matter How Many Times It Has Been Proven To You.

The Dream Didn't Fade As Dreams Usually Do Upon Waking.

His Mother Called Such People Ignorant And Superstitious, But His Father Only Shook His Head Slowly And Puffed His Pipe And Said That Sometimes Old Stories Had A Grain Or Two Of Truth In Them And It Was Best Not To Take Chances. It Was Why, He Said, He Crossed Himself Whenever A Black Cat Crossed His Path.

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

As Always At These Times When He Felt Really In Need Of God The Front Of His Mind Was Serene, But The Deeper Part, Where Faith Did Constant Battle With Doubt, Was Terrified That There Would Be No Answer.

When Asked, "how Do You Write?" I Invariably Answer, "one Word At A Time," And The Answer Is Invariably Dismissed. But That Is All It Is. It Sounds Too Simple To Be True, But Consider The Great Wall Of China, If You Will: One Stone At A Time, Man. That's All. One Stone At A Time. But I've Read You Can See That Motherfucker From Space Without A Telescope.

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?

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

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 Like To Always Stop With A Couple Of Pages That I Haven't - That Are Just Raw Copy, Where I Haven't Touched It, I Haven't Tried To Revise It, I Haven't Tried To Polish It. It's Like Having A Little Bit Of A Runway. The Next Day When You Sit Down, You Have The Comfort Of Saying, Well, I Have Got A Little Bit Here, Used To Be In The Typewriter. Now It's In The Magic Box, The Computer.

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.

Hemingway Sucks. If I Set Out To Write That Way, It Would Have Been Been Hollow And Lifeless Because It Wasn't Me.

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

You See Something, Then It Clicks With Something Else, And It Will Make A Story. But You Never Know When It's Going To Happen.

A Tragedy Is A Tragedy, And At The Bottom, All Tragedies Are Stupid. Give Me A Choice And I'll Take A Midsummer Night's Dream Over Hamlet Every Time. Any Fool With Steady Hands And A Working Set Of Lungs Can Build Up A House Of Cards And Then Blow It Down, But It Takes A Genius To Make People Laugh.

The Sandwich He Made Was Bologna And Cheese, His Favorite. All The Sandwiches He Made Were His Favorites; That Was One Of The Advantages Of Being Single.

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

I Started To Submit When I Was Twelve, And Obviously At That Time They Weren't Good Enough, And I Suppose In My Heart Of Hearts I Knew It. But You Have To Start Sooner Or Later, You Have To Dig In.

The Past Is Obdurate. It Doesn't Want To Change.

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

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

I Think The Best Stories Always End Up Being About The People Rather Than The Event, Which Is To Say Character-driven.

The Tears That Heal Are Also The Tears That Scald And Scourge.

There Are A Lot Of People In The Field [ Of Horror Stories] That I Do Read. There Is A Lot Of Stuff That Is Written In This Field, Though, That Is Not Very Good. You Just Have To Look For The Good Stuff.

Roland Grabbed Jake And Hauled Him To His Feet. “you Came!” Jake Shouted. “you Really Came!” “i Came, Yes. By The Grace Of The Gods And The Courage Of My Friends, I Came.

I Understand That Each One Of Us Works At A Different Speed, And Has A Slightly Different Process. I Understand That These Writers Are Painstaking, Wanting Each Sentence-each Word-to Carry Weight... I Know It’s Not Laziness, But Respect For The Work, And I Understand From My Own Work That Haste Makes Waste. But I Also Understand That Life Is Short, And That In The End, None Of Us Is Prolific. The Creative Spark Dims, And Then Death Puts It Out. William Shakespeare, For Instance, Hasn’t Produced A New Play For 400 Years. That, My Friends, Is A Long Dry Spell.

Haste Makes Waste

Until That Afternoon In October Four Years Ago, I Hadn't Known Dogs Could Scream.

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

As With All Other Aspects Of The Narrative Art, You Will Improve With Practice, But Practice Will Never Make You Perfect. Why Should It? What Fun Would That Be?

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

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.

The Three Is Really Wonderful. A Mix Of Michael Crichton And Shirley Jackson, Hard To Put Down And Vastly Entertaining.

No Knowledge Obtained Without Risk

Later, Going Home, I Realized They Didn't Look Alike At All; What Made Them Seem To Was The Aftermath Of Stress And The Lingering Of Sorrow. It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces, And Makes Us Look Like Family.

Everything That Goes Around Comes Around, They Say, And Although I've Never Been Able To Figure Out Who The Mysteriously Wise Sages Known As "they" Might Be, They're Certainly Right When It Comes To Time-travel.

May You Find Your Tower, Roland, And Breach It, And May You Climb To The Top!

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.

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.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

Kill You All!" The Clown Was Laughing And Screaming. "try To Stop Me And I'll Kill You All! Drive You Crazy And Then Kill You All! You Can't Stop Me!

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

Until We See Each Other Again, Keep Your Head Together, Read Some Good Books, Be Useful, Be Happy.

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

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

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.

My Childhood Was Pretty Ordinary, Except From A Very Early Age, I Wanted To Be Scared. I Just Did. I Was Scared Afterwards. I Wanted A Light On, Because I Was Afraid That There Was Something In The Closet. My Imagination Was Very Active, Even At A Young Age.

I Think Most Of Us Are Fascinated By The Macabre And By The Weird And Even The Nastiness That Comes Along.

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.

Did It [cocaine] For About Eight Years. Not A Terribly Long Time To Be An Addict I Guess, But It Is Longer Than World War Ii.

Writing Is Like A Little Hole In Reality That You Can Go Through And You Can Get Out And You Can Be Someplace Else For A While.

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

He Didn’t Know If That Was Really True Or Not, But He Discovered Something Which Was Tremendously Liberating: He Didn’t Care. He Was Very Tired Of Thinking And Thinking And Still Not Knowing. He Was Also Tired Of Being Frightened, Like A Man Who Has Entered A Cave On A Lark And Now Begins To Suspect He Is Lost. Stop Thinking About It, Then. That’s The Solution.

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.

I Think Reality Is Thin, You Know, Thin As Lake Ice After A Thaw, And We Fill Our Lives With Noise And Light And Motion To Hide That Thinness From Ourselves.

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.

Time's The Thief Of Memory

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.

There Is A Story In The Book Night Shift, Called 'the Mangler,' About A Laundry Machine That Takes On A Sort Of Malignant Life. I Worked In A Laundry For About A Year And A Half After I Got Out Of College. It Was The Only Job I Could Find To Support My Wife And Our First Child. There Was A Fellow There That Had No Hands Or Forearms. He Simply Had Hooks. This Is One Of The Things That They Don't Tell You About When You Become Management. You Have To Wear A Tie. It Was This Fellow's Tie That Did Him In.

I Can See Your Dirtypillows.

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.

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.

At The Time We’re Stuck In It, Like Hostages Locked In A Turkish Bath, High School Seems The Most Serious Business In The World To Just About All Of Us. It’s Not Until The Second Or Third Class Reunion That We Start Realizing How Absurd The Whole Thing Was.

It's Dialogue That Gives Your Cast Their Voices, And Is Crucial In Defining Their Characters.

I Believe That The Combination Of Pencil And Memory Creates A Kind Of Practical Magic, And Magic Is Dangerous.

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

Time Slowed And Reality Bent; On And On The Eggman Went.

The Greatest Mystery The Universe Offers Is Not Life But Size.

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

Without Story Books Is Like A Person With No Soul.

Readers Have A Loyalty That Cannot Be Matched Anywhere Else In The Creative Arts, Which Explains Why So Many Writers Who Have Run Out Of Gas Can Keep Coasting Anyway, Propelled On To The Bestseller Lists By The Magic Words Author Of On The Covers Of Their Books.

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.

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.

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

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

True Friendship

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?

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

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

A Person Can Go Along Quite Awhile If They Get A Good Day Every Once And Again.

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.

True Love Always Happens In A Flash.

The Simple Truth Of Things Is That Bad Dreams Are Far Better Than Bad Wakings.

I Am In Trouble Here. This Woman Is Not Right.

This Is How A Man Looks When He's Deciding That The Risk Of Death Is Better Than The Risk Of Change.

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."

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

There Are A Great Many Ways To Commit Suicide You Know.

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

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.

If A Writer Knows What He Or She Is Doing, I'll Go Along For The Ride. If He Or She Doesn't... Well, I'm In My Fifties Now, And There Are A Lot Of Books Out There. I Don't Have Time To Waste With The Poorly Written Ones.

Do They See The Lethal Insanity Of A Race To The Brink Of Oblivion, And Then Over The Edge? Apparently Not. If They Did, Surely They Wouldn't Be Racing To Begin With. Or Is It A Simple Failure Of Imagination? One Doesn't Like To Think Such A Rudimentary Failing Could Bring About The End, Yet...

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

The Monster Nevers Dies.

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

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

The Look Of The Sky As The Day's Blue Blood Runs Out Of Its Cheek.

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

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.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

The Scariest Moment Is Always Just Before You Start.

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

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

Multiple Choice

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

I Recognize Terror As The Finest Emotion And So I Will Try To Terrorize The Reader. But If I Find That I Cannot Terrify, I Will Try To Horrify, And If I Find That I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross-out. I'm Not Proud.

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."

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

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

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

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

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 Dream Might Have Been More Than A Dream. It Was As If A Door In The Wall Of Reality Had Come Ajar... And Now All Sorts Of Unwelcome Things Were Flying Through.

Little Kids' Minds Are Very, Very Strong. They Bend. There's A Lot Of Tensile Strength And They Don't Break. We Start Our Kids Off On Things Like "hansel And Gretel," Which Features Child Abandonment, Kidnapping, Attempted Murder, Forcible Detention, Cannibalism, And Finally Murder By Cremation. And The Kids Love It.

The Overlook Was Still Not Done With Him. Written On The Mirror, Not In Lipstick But In Blood, Was A Single Word: Redrum

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.

Panic Is Highly Contagious, Especially In Situations When Nothing Is Known And Everything Is In Flux.

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

It Always Comes Down To Just Two Choices. Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying.

Definition Of A Wanderer: A Guy Who's Always Looking Beyond.

Dark Tower Series

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

I Love Music, And I Can Play A Little. But Anyone Can See The Difference Between Someone Who's Talented And Someone That's Not.

Who Gets To Be Best-liked In Any Community? Who Is The Most Trusted? Why, The Man Who Does The Dirty Job, Of Course, And Does It With A Smile. The Man Who Does The Job You Couldn't Bring Yourself To Do.

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.

I Am The Literary Equivalent Of A Big Mac And Fries.

If I Can Get It Down On Paper Without Puking All Over The Word Processor, Then As Far As I'm Concerned, It's Fit To See The Light Of Day.

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.

My Heart's With You, Bill, No Matter How It Turns Out. My Heart Is With All Of Them, And I Think That, Even If We Forget Each Other, We'll Remember In Our Dreams.

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?

Teddy, Vern, Chris: I Don't Shut Up. I Grow Up. And When I Look At You, I Throw Up. Aghhh! Gordie: And Then Your Mom Goes Around The Corner And She Licks It Up.

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.

I’m Not Particularly Keen On Writing Which Exhaustively Describes The Physical Characteristics Of The People In The Story And What They’re Wearing… I Can Always Get A J. Crew Catalogue… …so Spare Me, If You Please, The Hero’s ‘sharply Intelligent Blue Eyes’ And ‘outthrust Determined Chin’.

Jk Rowling Created Seven Horcruxes. She Put A Part Of Her Soul In Every Book And Now Her Books Will Live Forever

We Make Up Horrors To Help Us Cope With The Real Ones.

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

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

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

If It's Ok To Register Cars And License Drivers, Why Is It Not Ok To Impose Similar Legal Responsibilities On Gun Owners?

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

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

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

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

To Me, The Greatest Thing In The World Is Downloading Tv Shows On Itunes Because There Are No Commercials, And Yet If I Were A Working Stiff, I Could Never Afford To Do This. But I Don't Even Think About Money.

The Writer Must Have A Good Imagination To Begin With, But The Imagination Has To Be Muscular, Which Means It Must Be Exercised In A Disciplined Way, Day In And Day Out, By Writing, Failing, Succeeding And Revising.

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

Things Were Going Very Fast Now. Too Fast To Suit Him. Fantasy And Reality Had Merged.

Fantasy And Reality

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

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

What I Tell Kids Is Don't Get Mad (about Censorship) Get Even. Run, Don't Walk, To The First Library You Can Find, And Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Eyes. Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Brains. Because That's Exactly What You Need To Know.

Every Marriage Has Two Hearts, One Light And One Dark

What We Like To Think Of Ourselves And What We Really Are Rarely Have Much In Common.

Man Has Come To Dominate The Planet Thanks To Two Essential Traits. One Is Intelligence. The Other Has Been The Absolute Willingness To Kill Anyone And Anything That Gets In His Way.

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.

I Tend To Scare Myself.

Sometimes Life Coughs Up Coincidences No Writer Of Fiction Would Dare Copy.

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

Has It Ever Occurred To You That Parents Are Nothing But Overgrown Kids Until Their Children Drag Them Into Adulthood? Usually Kicking And Screaming?

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

This Inhuman Place Makes Human Monsters.

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

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

I Write About Things That Scare Me. I've Never Written A Snake Story In My Life. I Myself Have Never Written A Story About Snakes Because They Don't Scare Me. I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me.

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

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

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

By Writing A Horror Novel Where This Inexplicable Disorder Takes Over In Our Ordered Lives, You Make Order Look Better By Comparison. But Below That, There's A Part Of Us That Responds To The Who Bashing Their Instruments To Pieces On The Stage. There's A Very Primitive Part That Says, "do It Some More."

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?

My Father Had Taught Me - Mostly By Example - That If A Man Wanted To Be In Charge Of His Life, He Had To Be In Charge Of His Problems.

The Stories We Hear In Our Childhood Are The Ones We Remember All Our Lives.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Knowing Nothing

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

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.

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

And People Who Don’t Dream, Who Don’t Have Any Kind Of Imaginative Life, They Must… They Must Go Nuts. I Can’t Imagine That.

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.

Language Does Not Always Have To Wear A Tie And Lace-up Shoes.

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.

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

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

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

Writing Is Like Sex. The More You Think About It, The Harder It Is To Do. It's Better Not To Think About It So Much And Just Let It Happen.

I Love My Sons And I Love That They Are Writers - I Also Love My Daughter, Who's A Minister And An Orchard Keeper! - But I Wouldn't Wish The Burden Of Mid-world And The Dark Tower On Them. I Enjoy Working With Them, Though, Because We Fit Together.

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

Sooner Or Later

There Are All Sorts Of Theories And Ideas About What Constitutes A Good Opening Line. It's Tricky Thing, And Tough To Talk About Because I Don't Think Conceptually While I Work On A First Draft -- I Just Write. To Get Scientific About It Is A Little Like Trying To Catch Moonbeams In A Jar. 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.

There Are Lots Of Would-be Censors Out There, And Although They May Have Different Agendas, They All Want Basically The Same Thing: For You To See The World They See...or To At Least Shut Up About What You Do See That's Different. They Are Agents Of The Status Quo. Not Necessarily Bad Guys, But Dangerous Guys If You Happen To Believe In Intellectual Freedom.

Trending Author

Hilda Doolittle

George Armstrong Custer

Christopher Hampton

Category