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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.

-Stephen King

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Human Beings Have Got

Stephen King

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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.

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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.

He Thrusts His Fists Against The Posts And Still Insists He Sees The Ghosts.

But See That You Get On. That's Your Job In This Hard World, To Keep Your Love Alive And See That You Get On, No Matter What. Pull Your Act Together And Just Go On.

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

The Glory Of A Good Tale Is That It Is Limitless And Fluid; A Good Tale Belongs To Each Reader In Its Own Particular Way.

That's Not Such A Bad Thing,' He Said To Me. 'in Nightmares We Can Think The Worst. That's What They're For, I Guess.

Ka Was A Wheel; It Was Also A Net From Which None Ever Escaped.

When I Was Younger, I Used To Vacillate Between Thinking Love Was This Great And Glorious Mystery And Thinking It Was Just Something A Bunch Of Hollywood Move Producers Made Up To Sell More Tickets In The Depression, When Dish Night Kind Of Played Out." Eddie Laughed. Now I Think That All Of Us Are Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You...eddie, You Fill Me Up.

If It's Ka It'll Come Like A Wind, And Your Plans Will Stand Before It No More Than A Barn Before A Cyclone

There Is No Idea Dump, No Story Central, No Island Of The Buried Bestsellers; Good Stories Seem To Come Quite Literally From Nowhere, Sailing At You Right Out Of The Empty Sky.

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

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

Sorry Is The Kool-aid Of Human Emotions. It's What You Say When You Spill A Cup Of Coffee Or Throw A Gutter Ball When You're Bowling With The Girls In The League. True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

Did You Know That Dairy Queen Ice Cream Is Mostly Bubbles?

If You're Just Starting Out As A Writer, You Could Do Worse Than Strip Your Television's Electric Plug-wire, Wrap A Spike Around It, And Then Stick It Back Into The Wall. See What Blows, And How Far. Just An Idea.

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

Lying In The Bed That Had Once Held Two, Lisey Thought Alone Never Felt More Lonely Than When You Woke Up And Discovered You Still Had The House To Yourself. That You And The Mice In The Walls Were The Only Ones Still Breathing.

The Quiet, Singing Voice Of The Rose. The Song That Promised All Might Be Well, All Might Be Well, That All Manner Of Things Might Be Well.

I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy.

That's The Day's Business. Thinking. Thinking And Isolation, Because It Doesn't Matter If You Pass The Time Of Day With Someone Or Not; In The End, You're Alone. He Seemed To Have Put In As Many Miles In His Brain As He Had With His Feet. The Thoughts Kept Coming And There Was No Way To Deny Them.

But Writers Invite Ghosts, Maybe; Along With Actors And Artists, They Are The Only Totally Accepted Mediums Of Our Society. They Make Worlds That Never Were, Populate Them With People Who Never Existed, And Then Invite Us To Join Them In Their Fantasies. And We Do It, Don't We? Yes. We Pay To Do It.

How Else Could He Go On, Except With Merciful Incomprehension Held Before Him Like A Shield? How Could Anyone?

Incomprehension

There Are Things Of Such Darkness And Horror—just, I Suppose, As There Are Things Of Such Great Beauty—that They Will Not Fit Through The Puny Human Doors Of Perception.

First Comes Smiles, Then Lies. Last Is Gunfire.-roland Deschain, Of Gilead

Language Does Not Always Have To Wear A Tie And Lace-up Shoes. The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story... To Make Him/her Forget, Whenever Possible, That He/she Is Reading A Story At All.

All I Can Say Is What You Already Know: Some Days Are Treasure. Not Many, But I Think In Almost Every Life There Are A Few. That Was One Of Mine, And When I'm Blue -- When Life Comes Down On Me And Everything Looks Tawdry And Cheap, The Way Joyland Avenue Did On A Rainy Day -- I Go Back To It, If Only To Remind Myself That Life Isn't Always A Butcher's Game. Sometimes The Prizes Are Real. Sometimes They Are Precious.

Are You Sure Self-pity Is A Luxury You Can Afford, Jack?

You Can't Be Careful On A Skateboard.

I'm Not A Big Fan Of Psychoanalysis: I Think If You Have Mental Problems What You Need Are Good Pills. But I Do Think That If You Have Thinks That Bother You, Things That Are Unresolved, The More That You Talk About Them, Write About Them, The Less Serious They Become.

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

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.

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

When We Blew The First Atomic Bomb At White Sands Near The End Of The War, Nobody Knew What Was Going To Happen. There Was A Theory That The Chain Reaction Would Continue Forever. And We Would Have Created A Little Tiny Sun Out There In The Desert That Would Burn Until The End Of The Universe. It Wasn't A Widely Held Theory But It Was A Theory That Nobody Had A Way Of Disproving. There Were People Who Thought It Wouldn't Go Off At All, That It Would Simply Sit Out There And Melt And Produce A Great Big Dirty Cloud Of Radioactivity. Nobody Knew.

The Book Is Not The Important Part. The Book Is The Delivery System. The Important Part Is The Story And The Talent.

You Know," Glen Bateman Said, Looking Out Toward Grand Junction In The Early Light Of Morning, "i've Heard The Saying 'that Sucks' For Years Without Really Being Sure Of What It Meant. Now I Think I Know.

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.

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Each Life Makes Its Own Immitation Of Immortality.

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.

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

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

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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.

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As With All Other Aspects Of Fiction, The Key To Writing Good Dialogue Is Honesty.

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A Lot Of Authority Figures Want To Be Good. I Sense That, And Yet At The Same Time I Sense That Authority, After A While, Always Leads To Some Kind Of Oppression. When The Minority Report Comes In, What You Do Is Run The Minority Out Of Town With A Flaming Cross. It's Just The Way Things Are.

I Understand From My Own Work That Haste Makes Waste. But I Also Understand That ... 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

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

True Friendship

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Writing Is A Lonely Job. Having Someone Who Believes In You Makes A Lot If Difference. They Don't Have To Makes Speeches. Just Believing Is Usually Enough.

Everything's A Lot Tougher When It's For Real. That's When You Choke. When It's For Real.

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.

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

What I'm Saying Is That I'm Trying To Find Rational Reasons To Explain Irrational Feelings, And That's Neveer A Good Sign.

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

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

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

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.

A Product Can Be Quickly Outdated, But A Successful Brand Is Timeless.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

Death Is When The Monsters Get You.

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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.

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

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.

Fools Are The Only Folk On The Earth Who Can Absolutely Count On Getting What They Deserve.

My Wife Says, And I Agree With Her, That What Would Be Really Great For Maine Would Be To Legalize Dope Completely And Set Up Dope Stores The Way That There Are State-run Liquor Stores. You Could Get Your Acapulco Gold Or Your Whatever It Happened To Be - Your Augusta Gold Or Your Bangor Gold. And People Would Come From All The Other States To Buy It, And There Could Be A State Tax On It. Then Everybody In Maine Could Have A Cadillac.

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.

The Mind Can Calculate, But The Spirit Yearns, And The Heart Knows What The Heart Knows

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

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.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest Things To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them - Words Shrink Things That Seemed Limitless When They Were In Your Head To No More Than Living Size When They're Brought Out.

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The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

Wanting More Is Just A Recipe For Heartache.

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.

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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.

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.

Zombies Are The New Vampire.

He Looked To Her Like An Absurd Twentieth-century Hamlet, An Indecisive Figure So Mesmerized By Onrushing Tragedy That He Was Helpless To Divert Its Course Or Alter It In Any Way.

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

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Pain Is The Biggest Power Of Love.

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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!

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

He Killed Them With Their Love.

...it Was More Like Bleeding Than Crying.

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

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What Charitable 1 Percenters Can't Do Is Assume Responsibility - America's National Responsibilities: The Care Of Its Sick And Its Poor, The Education Of Its Young, The Repair Of Its Failing Infrastructure, The Repayment Of Its Staggering War Debts.

Money Can't Buy Off The Lightning.

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

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Don't Let The Sun Go Down Without Saying Thank You To Someone, And Without Admitting To Yourself That Absolutely No One Gets This Far Alone.

Absence May Or May Not Make The Heart Grow Fonder, But It Certainly Freshens The Eye.

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

The Bad Ideas Kind Of Just Drop Out Of The Mix. You Forget About Them. The Good Ones Stick Around.

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

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

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

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.

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Fear Stands For Face Everything And Recover – Old Aa Saying

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

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Time's The Thief Of Memory

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A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

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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

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I Don't Ask Myself, "well, Does God Exist Or Does God Not Exist?" I Choose To Believe That God Exists, And Therefore I Can Say, "god, I Can't Do This By Myself. Help Me Not To Take A Drink Today. Help Me Not To Take A Drug Today." And That Works Fine For Me.

The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story.... Writing Is Seduction. Good Talk Is Part Of Seduction.

I Got Letters From People That Have Had Peculiar Psychic Experiences, Experiences With The Dead - Sometimes Fairly Tranquil Experiences And Sometimes Very Terrifying Experiences. I Do Believe That A Lot Of Them Are Sincere. I Do Believe, Also, That Some Of Them May Be Misguided. But, I Think The Majority Of Them Have Experienced Something.

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

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

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.

About Halfway Through I Broke Down Crying, Which I Hadn't Expected. I Was A Little Ashamed, But Only A Little;it Was Her, You See, And She Never Taxed Me With The Times That I Slipped From The Way I Thought A Man Should Be...the Way I Thought I Should Be, At Any Rate. A Man With A Good Wife Is The Luckiest Of God's Creatures, And One Without Must Be Among The Most Miserable, I Think, The Only True Blessing Of Their Lives That They Don't Know How Poorly Off They Are.

Sarcastic People Tend To Be Marshmallows Underneath The Armor

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’.

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.

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.

Even The Company Of The Mad Was Better Than The Company Of The Dead.

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!

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.

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

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

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

I'm Going To Be Dead For A Long Time, So I Have A Lot To Do Now.

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.

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

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.

Dolls With No Little Girls Around To Mind Them Were Sort Of Creepy Under Any Conditions.

Small Towns Harbor Small Imaginations.

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.

In Polite Society, We Call Our Obsessions Hobbies.

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.

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 Wasn't A Social Drinker. I Used To Say That I Didn't Want To Go To Bars Because They Were Full Of Assholes Like Me.

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

You Should Never Trust A Person Who Prays In Public.

Talent Is A Dreadfully Cheap Commodity, Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work And Study; A Constant Process Of Honing. Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

In Bowling And In Life, If A Person Made The Spares, The Strikes Would Take Care Of Themselves.

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