Background Image

...

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.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Did A Couple

Stephen King

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Stephen King

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

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

Understand Death? Sure. That Was When The Monsters Got You.

All Is Forgotten In The Stone Halls Of The Dead. These Are The Rooms Of Ruin Where The Spiders Spin And The Great Circuits Fall Quiet, One By One.

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.

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 ... Or Change. Once Such Incantatory Phrases As "we See Now Through A Glass Darkly" And "mysterious Are The Ways". He Chooses His Wonders To Perform" Are Mastered, Logic Can Be Happily Tossed Out The Window". Religious Mania Is One Of The Few Infallible Ways Of Responding To The World's Vagaries, Because It Totally Eliminates Pure Accident. To The True Religious Maniac, It's All On Purpose.

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.

Time Takes It All, Whether You Want It To Or Not. Time Takes It All, Time Bears It Away, And In The End There Is Only Darkness. Sometimes We Find Others In That Darkness, And Sometimes We Lose Them There Again.

Friends. They Aren’t Any Such Thing As Good Friend Or Bad Friend. Maybe There Are Just Friend. People Who Stand By You When You're Hurt And Who Helped You Feel Not So Lonely. Maybe There Are Worth Being Scared For And Hoping For And Living For. Maybe Worth Dying For Too. If That What Has To Be. No Bad Friends. Only People You Want. Need To Be With. People Who Build Their Houses In Your Heart.

Kids Know They Can't Make It Alone, Yet At The Same Time, Built Into Each One Of Us, Is A Survival Ethic. It Says, "nobody Cares And You Have To Look Out For Yourself And If You Don't, You'll Die." These Two Things Work Against Each Other. I Think Most Kids Are Very Frightened Of Their Parents, And That's What All Fairy Tales Reflect: Parents Will Fail You And You'll Be Left On Your Own. But, Of Course, Everything Comes Out Right In The End And The Parents Take You Back.

Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

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

Love Among The Ruins... I'll Tell You Something, My Friend: Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

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.

Fear Is The Emotion That Makes Us Blind.

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

A Campaign, Like A Brand, Is Not Just A Number Of Bits Put Together - A Claim Here, A Pack Shot There, A Reason Why Somewhere Else. If We Try To Produce It By The Atomistic Approach, We Will End Up With A Sort Of Identikit Brand. It Will Be A Perfect Description Of The Structure Of The Brand, As The Identikit Can Describe The Contours Of The Face. But It Won't Be The Same Thing. The Brand Will Never Come To Life.

You Might Question A Winkle - A Feeling That Came To You Right Out Of The Blue - But You Didn’t Question Knowing.

One Only Wishes Wayne Lapierre And His Nra Board Of Directors Could Be Drafted To Some Of These Scenes, Where They Would Be Required To Put On Booties And Rubber Gloves And Help Clean Up The Blood, The Brains, And The Chunks Of Intestine Still Containing The Poor Wads Of Half-digested Food That Were Some Innocent Bystander's Last Meal.

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

Be True, Be Brave, Stand All The Rest Is Darkness.

When The Dawn Was Still Long Hours Away, Bad Thoughts Took On Flesh And Began To Walk. In The Middle Of The Night Thoughts Became Zombies.

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.

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.

Dead Was The Gift That Kept On Giving. Dead, Like Diamonds, Was Forever.

Any Game Looks Straight If Everyone Is Being Cheated At Once.

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

Belief In The Supernatural Or Belief In Wild Talents Like Precognition And Telepathy And Telekinesis And Things Like That, It Seems To Me That Belief In Those Things Is Just Very, Very Freeing.

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.

I Didn't Go To Bars Much. One Drunken Asshole Was All I Could Handle And That Was Me. I Wrote. I Don't Remember A Lot Of It.

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.

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

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

In Many Cases When A Reader Puts A Story Aside Because It 'got Boring,' The Boredom Arose Because The Writer Grew Enchanted With His Powers Of Description And Lost Sight Of His Priority, Which Is To Keep The Ball Rolling.

I’m Convinced That Fear Is At The Root Of Most Bad Writing. Dumbo Got Airborne With The Help Of A Magic Feather; You May Feel The Urge To Grasp A Passive Verb Or One Of Those Nasty Adverbs For The Same Reason. Just Remember Before You Do That Dumbo Didn’t Need The Feather; The Magic Was In Him.

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

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've Always Thought It Would Be Fun To Update "hansel And Gretel." I'd Have These White Parents In The Suburbs With An Income Of Fifty Or Sixty Thousand Dollars. Daddy Loses His Job, And The Wicked Stepmother Says, "we Could Get Along, We Could Keep Our Mastercharge, If You'd Just Get Rid Of Those Shitty Kids." Finally The Father Hires A Limo And Tells The Driver, "drop 'em Off On Lenox Avenue In Harlem At Two In The Morning." These Two Little White Kids Land There. They're Menaced. And This Supposedly Nice Black Lady Says, "would You Like Some Candy?"

Anywhere In New York, Anywhere In The Country, Somewhere There's Going To Be A Coke Sign. People Identify With Coke. You Can Write A Novel About New York And People From The Country Will Read It If They Feel That You've Made Them Familiar With New York.

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

In Both Writing And Sleeping, We Learn To Be Physically Still At The Same Time We Are Encouraging Our Minds To Unlock From The Humdrum Rational Thinking Of Our Daytime Lives.

Nothing Is Ever Lost, Sarah. Nothing That Can't Be Found.

Time Is A Face On The Water.

The First Draft Of A Book—even A Long One—should Take No More Than Three Months, The Length Of A Season.

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.

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.

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?

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.

We're All Going To Die; I'm Just Trying To Make It A Little More Interesting.

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.

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

You Can See The Goldenrod, That Most Tenacious And Pernicious And Beauteous Of All New England Flora, Bowing Away From The Wind Like A Great And Silent Congregation.

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.

When You Own A Piano, It's Harder To Think About Moving.

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

I Don't Make Movies. I Don't Feel That I Have To Have Artistic Control. Part Of This Comes From The Fact That The Book Lives On No Matter What Hollywood Does To Your Novel In Terms Of A Film. Now, You Try To Be Careful Who You Allow To Do Your Film Because Nobody Wants Their Novel To Become A Turkey Movie. But, On The Other Hand, It Is A Crapshot Anyway, Because Even The Best People Can Make A Bad Film.

True Love, Like Any Other Strong And Addicting Drug, Is Boring — Once The Tale Of Encounter And Discovery Is Told, Kisses Quickly Grow Stale And Caresses Tiresome… Except, Of Course, To Those Who Share The Kisses, Who Give And Take The Caresses While Every Sound And Color Of The World Seems To Deepen And Brighten Around Them. As With Any Other Strong Drug, True First Love Is Really Only Interesting To Those Who Have Become Its Prisoners. And, As Is True Of Any Other Strong And Addicting Drug, True First Love Is Dangerous.

I Do Not Kill With My Gun; He Who Kills With His Gun Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Kill With My Heart.

When A Good Writer Is Having Fun, The Audience Is Almost Always Having Fun Too.

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

Multiple Choice

I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me. I Think We Tend To Write Out Our Phobias.

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

Books Are The Perfect Entertainment: No Commercials, No Batteries, Hours Of Enjoyment For Each Dollar Spent. What I Wonder Is Why Everybody Doesn't Carry A Book Around For Those Inevitable Dead Spots In Life.

It Occured To Her That Pleasure, No Matter How Deep, Was A Ghostly, Ephemeral Thing. Love Might Make The World Go Round, But She Was Convinced It Ws The Cries Of The Badly Wounded Andf Deeply Afflicted Which Spun The Universe On The Great Glass Pole Of It's Axis.

Everything Is Sort Of Built In A Way That To Me Suggests Intelligent Design. But At The Same Time, There's A Lot Of Things In Life Where You Say To Yourself, Well, If This Is God's Plan, It's Very Peculiar. And You Have To Wonder About That Guy's Personality, The Big Guy's Personality.

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. I'll Love Your Face No Matter What It Looks Like. Because It's Yours.

I Hold To No God," Roland Said. "i Hold To The Tower, And Won't Pray To That.

The First Is That Good Writing Consists Of Mastering The Fundamentals (vocabulary, Grammar, The Elements Of Style) And Then Filling The Third Level Of Your Toolbox With The Right Instruments. The Second Is That While It Is Impossible To Make A Competent Writer Out Of A Bad Writer, And While Is Equally Impossible To Make A Great Writer Out Of A Good One, It Is Possible, With Lots Of Hard Work, Dedication, And Timely Help, To Make A Good Writer Out Of A Merely Competent One

And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

High School Isn't A Very Important Place. When You're Going You Think It's A Big Deal, But When It's Over Nobody Really Thinks It Was Great Unless They're Beered Up.

A Cat Won't Curry Favor Even If It's In Their Best Interests To Do So. A Cat Can't Be A Hypocrite. If More Preachers Were Like Cats, This Would Be A More Religious Country.

Forced To Define 'irrational Subconscious,' I Would Say That It Is A Small Padded Room Inside All Of Us, Where The Only Furnishing Is A Small Card Table, And The Only Thing On The Card Table Is A Revolver Loaded With Flexible Bullets.

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

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.

Any Word You Have To Hunt For In A Thesaurus Is The Wrong Word. There Are No Exceptions To This Rule.

Thought Provoking

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

Black As Night And As Beautiful As Forever.

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

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

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.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say

Was There Ever A Trap To Match The Trap Of Love?

And The Most Terrifying Question Of All May Be Just How Much Horror The Human Mind Can Stand And Still Maintain A Wakeful, Staring, Unrelenting Sanity.

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.

It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair. So Cried His Child's Heart, And Then His Child's Heart Died A Little. For That Is Also The Way Of The World.

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.

If You Wrote Something For Which Someone Sent You A Check, If You Cashed The Check And It Didn't Bounce, And If You Then Paid The Light Bill With The Money, I Consider You Talented.

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

And I Wonder If There Is Really Any Point To What I'm Doing, Or What I'm Supposed To Make Of A World Where A Man Can Get Rich Playing "let's Pretend

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.

And You May Make Revelations That Cost You Dearly Only To Have People Look At You In A Funny Way, Not Understanding What You've Said At All, Or Why You Thought It Was So Important That You Almost Cried While You Were Saying It.

There Were Times . . . When It Occurred To Me That I Was Repeating My Mother's Life. Usually This Thought Struck Me As Funny. But If I Happened To Be Tired, Or If There Were Extra Bills To Pay And No Money To Pay Them With, It Seemed Awful. I'd Think 'this Isn't The Way Our Lives Are Supposed To Be Going.' Then I'd Think 'half The World Has The Same Idea.

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

Just The Act Of Cooking Made Her Feel Better, Because Cooking Was Life.

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

Sometimes Stories Cry Out To Be Told In Such Loud Voices That You Write Them Just To Shut Them Up.

One Of Life's Great Truths Is This: When One Is About To Be Struck By A Speeding Six-hundred Pound Coke Machine, One Need Worry About Little Else.

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

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

Now I Think All Of Us Were Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You... You Fill Me Up.

Death Is A Mystery, And Burial Is A Secret.

Don't Wait For The Muse. As I've Said, He's A Hardheaded Guy Who's Not Susceptible To A Lot Of Creative Fluttering. This Isn't The Ouija Board Or The Spirit-world We're Talking About Here, But Just Another Job Like Laying Pipe Or Driving Long-haul Trucks. Your Job Is To Make Sure The Muse Knows Where You're Going To Be Every Day From Nine 'til Noon. Or Seven 'til Three. If He Does Know, I Assure You That Sooner Or Later He'll Start Showing Up.

I Love You Too Much To Lie To You, Lisey. I Love You With All That Passes For My Heart. I Suspect That Kind Of All-out Love Becomes A Burden To A Woman In Time, But It's The Only Kind I Have To Give. I Think We're Going To Be Quite A Wealthy Couple In Terms Of Money, But I'll Almost Certainly Be An Emotional Pauper All My Life. I've Got The Money Coming, But As For The Rest I've Got Just Enough For You, And I Won't Ever Dirty Or Dilute It With Lies. Not With The Words I Say, Not With The Ones I Hold Back.

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

I Drink A Lot Of Beer, And That's The Drug Of Choice. You Find The Drug That Works For You. I Know, For Instance, This Guy Named Harlan Ellison - And He's Not Alone - Who's Very Proud Of The Fact That He Doesn't Put Dope Into His Body. He Tries Not To Put Additives Into His Body, Or Anything Like That. But He Can Afford To Do That Because Harlan's Drug Of Choice Is Harlan.

Animals Don't Know As Much About Jealousy As People, But They're Not Ignorant Of It, Either.

When Facts Speak, The Wise Man Listens.

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.

And So Will The World End, I Think, A Victim Of Love Rather Than Hate. For Love's Ever Been The More Destructive Weapon, Sure.

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.

Read A Lot, Write A Lot Is The Great Commandment.

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

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

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.

...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.

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 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.

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.

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

I Think You're A Taker. You've Always Been One. It's Like God Left Some Part Of You Out When He Built You Inside Of Me.

Disney Cartoons Are All Rated G. It's Really Funny. There Are Kids All Over The World Who Still Have Complexes Over Bambi's Father Getting Shot By The Hunter And Bambi's Mother Getting Crisped. But That's The Way It's Always Been. This Is The Sort Of Material That Appeals To Kids. Kids Understand It Instinctively. They Grip It.

Only Two Things Happen To Writers When They Die: Either Their Work Survives, Or It Becomes Forgotten.

There Are All Sorts Of Dream Interpretations, Freud's Being The Most Notorious, But I Have Always Believed They Served A Simple Eliminatory Function, And Not Much More - That Dreams Are The Psyche's Way Of Taking A Good Dump Every Now And Then.

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.

Come On Back And We’ll See If You Remember The Simplest Thing Of All – How It Is To Be Children, Secure In Belief And Thus Afraid Of The Dark.

Love Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where There Was Only Fear

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

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.

The Sun Was A Molten Coin Burning A Circle In The Low-hanging Overcast, Surrounded By A Fairy-ring Of Moisture.

The Sort Of Strenuous Reading And Writing Program I Advocate - Four To Six Hours A Day, Every Day - Will Not Seem Strenuous If You Really Enjoy Doing These Things And Have An Aptitude For Them.

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.

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

Cut Him. Cut Him While I Stand Here And Watch. I Want To See The Blood Flow. Don't Make Me Tell You Twice.

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?

A Woman Who Would Steal Your Love When Your Love Was Really All You Had To Give Was Not Much Of A Woman.

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

Grammar Is...the Pole You Grab To Get Your Thoughts Up On Their Feet And Walking.

Feet And Walking

Part Of My Function As A Writer Is To Dream Awake. And That Usually Happens. If I Sit Down To Write In The Morning, In The Beginning Of That Writing Session And The Ending Of That Session, I'm Aware That I'm Writing. I'm Aware Of My Surroundings. It's Like Shallow Sleep On Both Ends, When You Go To Bed And When You Wake Up. But In The Middle, The World Is Gone And I'm Able To See Better.

I've Killed Enough Of The World's Trees.

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

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.

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

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.

The Brain Is A Muscle That Can Move The World.

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.

Most People Are Optimists, Although They May Claim They Are Not. People Who Call Themselves Realists Are Often The Biggest Optimists Of All.

I Started Off Thinking Eminem Was A Flash In The Pan, A Kind Of Hip-hop Hanson Brother. How Wrong I Was. Recovery Is Sometimes Funny, Sometimes Terrible, Always Painfully Honest. The Matching Of Eminem And Rihanna On "love The Way You Lie" Is Pure Genius. "not Afraid" Is Pretty Great Too.

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.

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.

...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.

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

Directing Teenage Actors Is Like Juggling Jars Of Nitro-glycerine: Exhilarating And Dangerous.

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.

And She Sees That The Moonlight Is Losing Its Orange Glow. It Has Become Buttery, And Will Soon Turn To Silver.

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

I Just Write About What I Feel I Want To Write About. I'm Like A Kid. I Get An Idea, And It's Like A Kid's Toy That You Push And Tug Around The Room. It's Fun, It's Bright, It's Pretty And Maybe It'll Go Clack-clack Or Whiz-whiz, Whatever It Happens To Do. I Like To Make Believe.

I Changed It. I Had To. Do You Know Why?" She Studied Him, Her Eyes Grave. "because That Was Then And This Is Now. Because The Past Is Gone, Even Though It Defines The Present.

As Far As Where I Go When I Die, The Concept That I Am Simple Going To Flick Out, Like A Light Bulb, To Me Is Not Only Spiritually Impossible To Believe, But Logically It Is Laughable - The Idea That We Simply Die And Nothing Happens.

Mister, We Deal In Lead.

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

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.

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.

I Go Where The Story Leads. And, Sometimes, It Is A Little Bit Outrageous. And I Relish That. I Sort Of Want To Be As Much On The Edge As I Can.

You Cannot Hope To Sweep Someone Else Away By The Force Of Your Writing Until It Has Been Done To You.

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.

Late Last Night And The Night Before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers Knocking On My Door. I Wanna Go Out, Don't Know If I Can 'cuz I'm So Afraid Of The Tommyknocker Man.

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

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...

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

Keeping Secrets

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

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.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

I Don't Want To Speak Too Disparagingly Of My Generation (actually I Do, We Had A Chance To Change The World And Opted For The Home Shopping Network Instead), But There Was A View Among The Student Writers I Knew At That Time That Good Writing Came Spontaneously, In An Uprush Of Feeling That Had To Be Caught At Once; When You Were Building That All-important Stairway To Heaven, You Couldn't Just Stand Around With Your Hammer In Your Hand.

They Walked Through The Rainy Dark Like Gaunt Ghosts, And Garraty Didn't Like To Look At Them. They Were The Walking Dead.

My Wife Has Told Me Since That I Was Hungover Every Mornng Until About Two In The Afternoon, And From Five Until Midnight I Was Drunk Out Of My Mind. So She Says There Was This Period Of About Three Hours When She Could Talk To Me Like A Rational Human Being.

Was It Pretty? Your Country. . .your Land?" "it Was Beautiful," The Gunslinger Said. "there Were Fields And Forests And Rivers And Mists In The Morning. But That's Only Pretty. My Mother Used To Say That The Only Real Beauty Is Order And Love And Light.

Things Come In Three Major Degrees In The Human Experience, I Think. There's Good, Bad, And Terrible. And As You Go Down Into Progressive Darkness Towards Terrible, It Gets Harder And Harder To Make Subdivisions.

I Win, You Win. You Win, I Win. The Gun, I Win. The Fruit, You Win. I Win, You Win.

Say What You Mean. Say What You See. Make A Photograph, If You Can, For The Reader.

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.

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.

Both Rowling And Meyer, They’re Speaking Directly To Young People. … The Real Difference Is That Jo Rowling Is A Terrific Writer And Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

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

The Idea For A Novel Is Like A Little Tiny Fire In A Dark Night. And, One By One, The Characters Come And Stand Around It And Warm Their Hands.

They Were Still All Beautiful And There Was Still Enchantment And Wonder, But She Had Crossed A Line And Now The Fairy Tale Was Green With Corruption And Evil.

It's Up To Men To Build Things ... It's Up To God To Blow Them Down.

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."

The Tower. He Would Come To The Dark Tower And There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing All Their Names. The Sun Stained The East A Dusky Rose, And At Last Roland, No Longer The Last Gunslinger But One Of The Last Three, Slept And Dreamed His Angry Dreams Through Which There Ran Only That One Soothing Blue Thread: There I Will Sing All Their Names!

It's Exciting And It's Thrilling And It's Not Particularly Threatening, Because They're Not Overtly Sexual. A Lot Of The Physical Side Of It Is Conveyed In Things Like The Vampire Will Touch Her Forearm Or Run A Hand Over Skin, And She Just Flushes All Hot And Cold. And For Girls, That's A Shorthand For All The Feelings That They're Not Ready To Deal With Yet.

The Good Thing About Being Old, Is You Don’t Have To Worry About Dying Young.

Stories Are Artifacts, Not Really Made Things Which We Create And Can Take Credit For, But Pre-existing Objects Which We Dig Up.

...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.

Trending Author

Gerhard Richter

Category