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I'm A Situational Writer. You Give Me A Situation, Like A Writer Gets In A Car Crash, Breaks His Leg, Is Kidnapped By His Number-one Fan, And Is Kept In A Cabin And Forced To Write A Book - Everything Else Springs From There. You Really Don't Have To Work Once You've Had The Idea. All You Have To Do Is Kind Of Take Dictation From Something Inside.

-Stephen King

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I'm A Situational Writer.

Stephen King

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I'm A Situational Writer. You Give Me A Situation, Like A Writer Gets In A Car Crash, Breaks His Leg, Is Kidnapped By His Number-one Fan, And Is Kept In A Cabin And Forced To Write A Book - Everything Else Springs From There. You Really Don't Have To Work Once You've Had The Idea. All You Have To Do Is Kind Of Take Dictation From Something Inside.

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

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

Dead Fields Under A November Sky, Scattered Rose Petals Brown And Turning Up At The Edges, Empty Pools Scummed With Algae, Rot, Decomposition, Dust.

I Don't Like The Idea That I Am Going To Come Back As An Ant Or A Sparrow If I Don't Get Along In The Great Karma Of Life.

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

I'm Afraid Of All Kinds Of Things. I'm Afraid Of Failing At Whatever Story I'm Writing - That It Won't Come Up For Me, Or That I Won't Be Able To Finish It.

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.

I've Always Believed In God. I Also Think That's The Sort Of Thing That Either Comes As Part Of The Equipment, The Capacity To Believe, Or At Some Point In Your Life, When You're In A Position Where You Actually Need Help From A Power Greater Than Yourself, You Simply Make An Agreement.

When People Begin To Lose Hope, There's Bound To Be Explosions.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami.

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.

Not Everybody Believes In Ghosts, But I Do. Do You Know What They Are, Trisha? She Had Shaken Her Head Slowly. Men And Women Who Can't Get Over Their Past . . . That's What Ghosts Are.

... Don't Let Your Elders And Supposed Betters Tell You Any Different. Sure, You've Never Been To Paris. No, You Never Ran With The Bulls At Pamploma. Yes, You're A Pissant Who Had No Hair In Your Armpits Until Three Years Ago - But So What? If You Don't Start Out Too Big For Your Britches, How Are You Gonna Fill 'em When You Grow Up? Let It Rip Regardless Of What Anybody Tells You, That's My Idea; Sit Down An Smoke That Baby.

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

They Had Discovered One Could Grow As Hungry For Light As For Food.

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

They Say That Loving Eyes Can Never See, But That's A Fool's Axiom. Sometimes, They See Too Much

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

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.

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.

Monsters Are Real, And Ghosts Are Real Too. They Live Inside Us, And Sometimes, They Win.

The First Thing Was To Get Down To Addie Richardson's Henhouse, And That Was A Goodish Way, Four Or Five Miles. She Found Herself Wondering If The Lord Was Going To Send Her An Eagle To Fly Her Those Four Miles, Or Send Elijah In His Fiery Chariot To Give Her A Lift. Blasphemy," She Told Herself Complacently. "the Lord Provides Strength, Not Taxicabs.

And Suddenly It Didn't Seem To Matter Any More, Nothing Would Matter If She Could Turn Over, Turn Over And See The Stars, Turn Over And Look Once And Die.

To The Devil With False Modesty.

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.

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

The World Had Moved On And All That Was Over, Done Before Fairly Begun.

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

Don't Let The Door Hitcha Where The Good Lord Splitcha.

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

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.

The Muses Are Ghosts, And Sometimes They Come Uninvited.

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.

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.

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

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

Luck's The Word Those With Poor Hearts Use For Ka.

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

Multiple Choice

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

Do You Drink?" "of Course,i Just Said I Was A Writer.

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

The Scariest, Most Terrifying Thing That I Fear? Yes. My Imagination. I Thought You Were Going To Say "fear, Itself." Then You Have A Small Imagination.

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

Try Any Goddam Thing You Like, No Matter How Boringly Normal Or Outrageous. If It Works, Fine. If It Doesn't, Toss It. Toss It Even If You Love It.

Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

Thin Clouds Form, And The Shadows Lengthen Out. They Have No Breadth, As Summer Shadows Have; There Are No Leaves On The Trees Or Fat Clouds In The Sky To Make Them Thick. They Are Gaunt, Mean Shadows That Bite The Ground Like Teeth. As The Sun Nears The Horizon, Its Benevolent Yellow Begins To Deepen, To Become Infected, Until It Glares An Angry Inflamed Orange. It Throws A Variegated Glow Over The Horizon.

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

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

Your Pimples Are The Lord's Way Of Chastising You. Now Eat Your Pie.

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.

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.

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.

Time Continued To Pass - The Oldest Trick In The World, And Maybe The Only One That Really Is Magic.

If You're Going Into A Very Dark Place, Then You Should Take A Bright Light, And Shine It On Everything. If You Don't Want To See, Why In God's Name Would You Dare The Dark At All?

Because Who Would Ever Want To Get Close To Another Person If They Knew How Hard The Letting-go Part Was? In Your Heart They Only Die A Little At A Time, Don't They? Like A Plant When You Go Away On A Trip And Forget To Ask A Neighbor To Poke In Once In Awhile With The Old Watering-can, And Its So Sad—

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

Even When Love Isn't Enough...somehow It Is.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

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

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.

Let’s Talk, You And I. Let’s Talk About Fear. The House Is Empty As I Write This; A Cold February Rain Is Falling Outside. It’s Night. Sometimes When The Wind Blows The Way It’s Blowing Now, We Lose The Power. But For Now It’s On, And So Let’s Talk Very Honestly About Fear. Let’s Talk Very Rationally About Moving To The Rim Of Madnessand... And Perhaps Over The Edge.

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.

Silent White Light Filled The World. And The Righteous And Unrighteous Alike Were Consumed In That Holy Fire.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Think Telling Stories Is Like Pushing Something. Pushing Against Uncreation Itself, Maybe.

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I Simply Think That There Are Things In This World That Are Relics. We Have Unsettling Remnants Of Atlantis. They Have Found Things Off Bermuda, Great Walls And Things Of That Sort. This Seems To Indicate That There Were Races And Cultures That Went Before Us. And To Me, That's An Unsettling Idea.

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

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

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

Waiting Rooms Were Made For Books-of Course! But So Are Theater Lobbies Before The Show, Long And Boring Checkout Lines, And Everyone's Favorite, The John.

Love, The Simplest, Strongest, And Most Unforgiving Of All Emotions.

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.

Say Your Name Over Two Hundred Times And Discover You Are No One.

And All That Weirdness Isn't Just Going On Outside. It's In You Too, Right Now, Growing In The Dark Like Magic Mushrooms. Call It The Thing In The Cellar. Call It The Blow Lunch Factor. Call It The Loony Tunes File. I Think Of It As My Private Dinosaur, Huge, Slimy, And Mindless, Stumbling Around In The Stinking Swamp Of My Subconscious, Never Finding A Tar Pit Big Enough To Hold It.

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.

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

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

All I Ask Is That You Do As Well As You Can, And Remember That, While To Write Adverbs Is Human, To Write He Said Or She Said Is Divine.

How Much Courage Does It Take To Fire Up Your Tractor And Plow Under A Crop You Spent Six Or Seven Years Growing? How Much Courage To Go On And Do That After You've Spent All That Time Finding Out How To Prepare The Soil And When To Plant And How Much To Water And When To Reap? How Much To Just Say, "i Have To Quit These Peas. Peas Are No Good For Me, I Better Try Corn Or Beans.

The Man In Black Fled Across The Desert, And The Gunslinger Followed.

The Turtle Couldn't Help Us.

I Think It Is Beyond Doubt That H. P. Lovecraft Has Yet To Be Surpassed As The Twentieth Century's Greatest Practitioner Of The Classic Horror Tale.

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.

He Had Never Been A Social Man. He Had Shunned Causes With Contempt And Disgust. They Were For Pig-simple Suckers And People With Too Much Time And Money On Their Hands.

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

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

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

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.

I've Spread My Legs In The Backseat In A Creative Sense Quite A Few Times.

I Find I'm So Excited I Can Barely Sit Still Or Hold A Thought In My Head. I Think It Is The Excitement Only A Free Man Can Feel, A Free Man At The Start Of A Long Journey Whose Conclusion Is Uncertain. I Hope I Can Make It Across The Border. I Hope To See My Friend, And Shake His Hand. I Hope The Pacific Is As Blue As It Has Been In My Dreams. I Hope.

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

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

You Should Never Trust A Person Who Prays In Public.

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.

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.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

Good Books Are For Consideration After, Too.

Talent Is Never Static. It's Always Growing Or Dying.

Each Life Makes Its Own Immitation Of Immortality.

Time Heals All Wounds.

Death Was No Less A Miracle Than Birth.

Trust, A Sense Of Humor, And Don't Let The Sun Go Down On An Argument Without Trying To Make It Up. That's All I Know About Good Marriage. I've Been Married A Long Time - It Seems To Be Working.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

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

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.

When You're Six, Most Of Your Bingo Balls Are Still Floating Around In The Draw-tank.

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

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

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.

For A Woman A Man Will Do Many Things That He'd Turn His Back On In An Instant When Alone; Things He'd Back Away From, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Even When Drunk Adn With A Bunch Of His Friends Egging Him On.

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

When You Start, It's Very Cold, An Impossible Task. But Then Maybe The Characters Start To Take On A Little Bit Of Life, Or The Story Takes A Turn That You Don't Expect ... With Me That Happens A Lot Because I Don't Outline, I Just Have A Vague Notion. So It's Always Felt Like Less Of A Made Thing And More Of A Found Thing. That's Exciting. That's A Thrill.

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

Lovecraft Opened The Way For Me, As He Had Done For Others Before Me

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.

I See Things, That's All. Write Enough Stories And Every Shadow On The Floor Looks Like A Footprint; Every Line In The Dirt Like A Secret Message.

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

I Do Not Aim With My Hand; He Who Aims With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Aim With My Eye. I Do Not Shoot With My Hand; He Who Shoots With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Shoot With My Mind. 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.

It Was As Hysterical As A Woman Having A Hot Flash.

Hurt's A Reason To Change, But All The Hurt In The World Don't Change Facts.

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

Dark Tower Series

We Like To Think About How Smart We Are. But I Think Talent As A Writer Is Hard-wired In, It's All There, At Least The Basic Elements Of It. You Can't Change It Any More Than You Can Choose Whether To Be Right Handed Or Left Handed.

Sometimes The Only Thing To Do Is To Take The Thing That You Must Have. Even If Someone Gets Hurt.

On The Subject Of Love At First Sight, I’m With The Beatles: I Believe That It Happens All The Time.

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.

We Don't Know The Days That Will Change Our Lives. Probably Just As Well.

Might As Well Try To Drink The Ocean With A Spoon As Argue With A Lover.

And In The Gunslinger's Mind, Those Words Echoed: You Dare Not.

Tell Him He's Wrong. Tell Him That Even If He's Right About Waiting, He's Right For The Wrong Reasons, And That Makes Him All The Way Wrong.

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

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.

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

I Am Always Chilled And Astonished By The Would-be Writers Who Ask Me For Advice And Admit, Quite Blithely, That They "don't Have Time To Read." This Is Like A Guy Starting Up Mount Everest Saying That He Didn't Have Time To Buy Any Rope Or Pitons.

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

And Didn't They Say That, Although Curiosity Killed The Cat, Satisfaction Brought The Beast Back?

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.

The Worst Advice? 'don't Listen To The Critics.' I Think That You Really Ought To Listen To The Critics, Because Sometimes They're Telling You Something Is Broken That You Can Fix.

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

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

American Grammar Doesn't Have The Sturdiness Of British Grammar, But It Has Its Own Scruffy Charm.

Do It For Joy And You Can Do It Forever

It Was How Wars Really Ended, Dieffenbaker Supposed -- Not At Truce Tables But In Cancer Wards And Office Cafeterias And Traffic Jams. Wars Died One Tiny Piece At A Time, Each Piece Something That Fell Like A Memory, Each Lost Like An Echo That Fades In Winding Hills. In The End Even War Ran Up The White Flag. Or So He Hoped. He Hoped That In The End Even War Surrendered.

The Terror, Which Would Not End For Another 28 Years-if It Ever Did End-began, So Far As I Know Or Can Tell, With A Boat Made From A Sheet Of Newspaper Floating Down A Gutter Swollen With Rain.

Life Turns On A Dime.

Semi-facetiously, When People Ask Me Why I Write These Kinds Of Stories, I Simply Say That I Was Warped As A Child. And, There Is Some Truth To That.

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

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.

They Walked Back Into The World Together, Wearing The Gift That Had Been Given Them: Just Life. Pity Was Not Love, Barbie Reflected...but If You Were A Child, Giving Clothes To Someone Who Was Naked Had To Be A Step In The Right Direction.

Only Library Books Speak With Such Wordless Eloquence Of The Power Good Stories Hold Over Us.

You Will Not Falter, Because You Will Have The Everlasting Arm Of The Lord God Of Hosts To Lean On. Yes. With God’s Help You Will Stand.

A Person Who Doesn't Learn From The Past Is An Idiot, In My Estimation.

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

You Can't Polish A Turd.

Above, The Stars Shone Hard And Bright, Sparks Struck Off The Dark Skin Of The Universe.

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.

Symbolism Exists To Adorn And Enrich, Not To Create An Artificial Sense Of Profundity.

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

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.

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.

True Love Always Happens In A Flash.

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

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

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.

He Killed Them With Their Love.

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 Like To Think That Good People Win. But Even Good People Have Other Sides. Most People Will Slow Down To Get A Good Look At An Accident, Even Though They Won't Admit It.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

Love Is What Moves The World, I've Always Thought...it Is The Only Thing Which Allows Men And Women To Stand In A World Where Gravity Always Seems To Want To Pull Them Down...bring Them Low...and Make Them Crawl.

There's Nothing Like Stories On A Windy Night When Folks Have Found A Warm Place In A Cold World.

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.

Calling It A Simple Schoolgirl Crush Was Like Saying A Rolls-royce Was A Vehicle With Four Wheels, Something Like A Hay-wagon. She Did Not Giggle Wildly And Blush When She Saw Him, Nor Did She Chalk His Name On Trees Or Write It On The Walls Of The Kissing Bridge. She Simply Lived With His Face In Her Heart All The Time, A Kind Of Sweet, Hurtful Ache. She Would Have Died For Him.

Take The Dead From The Dead, The Old Proverb Said; Only A Corpse May Speak True Prophecy.

I'm Having A Magenta Day. Not Just Red, But Magenta!

When The Reader Hears Strong Echoes Of His Or Her Own Life And Beliefs, He Or She Is Apt To Become More Invested In The Story.

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

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

She Can't Help It,' He Said. 'she's Got The Soul Of A Poet And The Emotional Makeup Of A Junkyard Dog.

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

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

A Man Without A Sense Of Purpose, Even One Whose Bank Accounts Are Stuffed With Money, Is Always A Small Man.

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

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

The Idea That America Exists In A Culture Of Violence Is Bullshit. What America Exists In Is A Culture Of Kardashian.

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.

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.

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.

As A Young Man Just Beginning To Publish Some Short Fiction In The T&a Magazines, I Was Fairly Optimistic About My Chances Of Getting Published; I Knew That I Had Some Game, As The Basketball Players Say These Days, And I Also Felt That Time Was On My Side; Sooner Or Later The Best-selling Writers Of The Sixties And Seventies Would Either Die Or Go Senile, Making Room For Newcomers Like Me.

The Lord Is My Shepherd. I Shall Not Want For Nothing. He Makes Me Lie Down In The Green Pastures. He Greases Up My Head With Oil. He Gives Me Kung-fu In The Face Of My Enemies. Amen

Homesickness Is Not Always A Vague, Nostalgic, Almost Beautiful Emotion, Although That Is Somehow The Way We Always Seem To Picture It In Our Mind. It Can Be A Terribly Keen Blade, Not Just A Sickness In Metaphor But In Fact As Well. It Can Change The Way One Looks At The World; The Faces One Sees In The Street Look Not Just Indifferent But Ugly... Perhaps Even Malignant. Homesickness Is A Real Sickness--the Ache Of The Uprooted Plant.

The Soil Of A Man’s Heart Is Stonier; A Man Grows What He Can And Tends It.

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.

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