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I Realized The Shells Were Talking In A Voice I Recognized. I Should Have; It Was My Own. Had I Always Known That? I Suppose I Had. On Some Level, Unless We're Mad, I Think Most Of Us Know The Various Voices Of Our Own Imaginations. And Of Our Memories, Of Course. They Have Voices, Too. Ask Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Limb Or A Child Or A Long-cherished Dream. Ask Anyone Who Blames Himself For A Bad Decision, Usually Made In A Raw Instant (an Instant That Is Most Commonly Red). Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

-Stephen King

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I Realized The Shells

Stephen King

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I Realized The Shells Were Talking In A Voice I Recognized. I Should Have; It Was My Own. Had I Always Known That? I Suppose I Had. On Some Level, Unless We're Mad, I Think Most Of Us Know The Various Voices Of Our Own Imaginations. And Of Our Memories, Of Course. They Have Voices, Too. Ask Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Limb Or A Child Or A Long-cherished Dream. Ask Anyone Who Blames Himself For A Bad Decision, Usually Made In A Raw Instant (an Instant That Is Most Commonly Red). Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

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Fantasy Has A Better Chance Of Lasting Than A Lot Of Other Things. The Hobbit And The Narnia Books, They Seem To Get Handed Down Father To Son, Mother To Daughter. Because They're Set In A Fantasy World, They Can Remain Relevant.

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

I Write To Find Out What I Think.

A Child Blind From Birth Doesn't Even Know He's Blind Until Someone Tells Him. Even Then He Has Only The Most Academic Idea Of What Blindness Is; Only The Formerly Sighted Have A Real Grip On The Thing. Ben Hanscom Had No Sense Of Being Lonely Because He Had Never Been Anything But. If The Condition Had Been New, Or More Localized, He Might Have Understood, But Loneliness Both Encompassed His Life And Overreached It.

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

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

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

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

Americans Are Apocalyptic By Nature. The Reason Why Is That We've Always Had So Much, So We Live In Deadly Fear That People Are Going To Take It Away From Us.

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

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.

I Looked At The Ceiling And Wished This Life Was Over. This Unhappy Life That Had Started Out So Confidently. I Thought I Would Sleep No More That Night But Eventually I Did. In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That's What Wire Man Says.

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

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.

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

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

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.

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

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It Is Fairly Clear That Many Of The Arguments Against Proposition Testing Are Really Arguments Against Propositions Themselves.

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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.

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

When You Write, You Want To Get Rid Of The World, Don’t You? Of Course You Do. When You’re Writing, You’re Creating Your Own Worlds.

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

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Every Religion Lies. Every Moral Precept Is A Delusion. Even The Stars Are A Mirage. The Truth Is Darkness, And The Only Thing That Matters Is Making A Statement Before One Enters It. Cutting The Skin Of The World And Leaving A Scar. That's All History Is, After All: Scar Tissue.

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

Everything In Moderation. And That Includes A Couple Of Beers A Day.

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I Still Think That Of All The People Doing Top Fiction Today, John D. Macdonald Is The Best.he Was My Model As A Kid. If There Are People Out There That Want To Write, All You Need To Do Is Read 20 Of His Stories To Get An Idea What It Takes To Make A Story Kick Over.

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

You Cannot Condemn A Man For What May Only Be A Figment Of Your Own Imagination.

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

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

When It Comes To Horror There's A Strange Need To Analyze. When "evil Children" Fad Happened, There Was The Exorcist And The Other And The Omen. People Would Say, "what This Really Means Is That Americans Don't Want To Have Kids Anymore. They Feel Hostility Towards Their Own Children. They Feel They're Being Tied Down And Dragged Down." In Fact, In Most Cases, What Those Books Are About Is Nice Children Who Are Beset By Forces Beyond Their Control.

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

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.

Clear Communication Between Selves - The Surface Self And The Deep Self - Is The Enemy Of Self-doubt. It Slays Confusion.

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

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Invitation To Dance- It’s A Dance. And Sometimes They Turn The Lights Off In This Ballroom. But We’ll Dance Anyway, You And I. Even In The Dark. Especially In The Dark. May I Have The Pleasure?

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I Believe The Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs, And I Will Shout It From The Rooftops.

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... Suicide Gets In The Air Sometimes. Like A Cold Germ.

It Don't Matter If You Believe In God Nick, He Believes In You.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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The Death Of The Music Business Was Insane, But Audio Recordings Have Been Around Now For Maybe 120 Years. Books Have Been Around For, What, Nine Centuries? So They're More Entrenched Than Music.

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.

And Then Woe Is You, Pauly. Woe To The Max.

Working On A New Idea Is Kind Of Like Getting Married. Then A New Idea Comes Along And You Think, 'man, I'd Really Like To Go Out With Her.' But You Can't. At Least Not Until The Old Idea Is Finished.

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The Person Healed Has An Obligation To Then Ask Why— To Meditate On God's Will, And The Extraordinary Lengths To Which God Has Gone To Realize His Will.

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

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What You Don’t Know, You Can’t Tell. Or Made To Tell.

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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.

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

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As Always, The Blessed Relief Of Starting, A Feeling That Was Like Falling Into A Hole Filled With Bright Light. As Always, The Glum Knowledge That He Would Not Write As Well As He Wanted To Write. As Always The Terror Of Not Being Able To Finish, Of Accelerating Into A Brick Wall. As Always, The Marvelous Joyful Nervy Feeling Of Journey Begun.

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Wanting More Is Just A Recipe For Heartache.

Not Writing Would Be Like Going The Rest Of Your Life Without Having Dreams.

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

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I Was Being Paid To Do What I Loved, And There's No Gig On Earth Better Than That; It's Like A License To Steal.

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She Did Not Know If Her Gift Came From The Lord Of Light Or Of Darkness, And Now, Finally Finding That She Didn't Care Which, She Wad Overcome With Almost Indescribable Relief, As If A Huge Weight, Long Carried, Had Slipped From Her Shoulders.

Once I Fell In Love With Books, I Fell In Love Completely.

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

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.

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.

When Facts Speak, The Wise Man Listens.

I Have Never Felt Like I Was Creating Anything. For Me, Writing Is Like Walking Through A Desert And All At Once, Poking Up Through The Hardpan, I See The Top Of A Chimney. I Know There's A House Under There, And I'm Pretty Sure That I Can Dig It Up If I Want. That's How I Feel. It's Like The Stories Are Already There. What They Pay Me For Is The Leap Of Faith That Says: 'if I Sit Down And Do This, Everything Will Come Out Okay.'

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

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

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

A Person’s Never Too Old For Stories. Man And Boy, Girl And Woman, We Live For Them. - Roland Deschain

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Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

I Can't Lie And Say There Are No Bad Writers. Sorry, But There Are Lots Of Bad Writers.

A Kid Of Your Age---any Kid---could Get Hold Of Matches If She Wanted To, Burn Up The House Or Whatever. But Not Many Do. Why Would They Want To?

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

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

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Once Upon A Time

The One Thing About Kids Is That You Never Really Know Exactly What They're Thinking Or How They're Seeing. After Writing About Kids, Which Is A Little Bit Like Putting The Experience Under A Magnifying Glass, You Realize You Have No Idea How You Thought As A Kid. I've Come To The Conclusion That Most Of The Things That We Remember About Our Childhood Are Lies. We All Have Memories That Stand Out From When We Were Kids, But They're Really Just Snapshots. You Can't Remember How You Reacted Because Your Whole Head Is Different When You Stand Aside.

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.

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

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

So Do We Pass The Ghosts That Haunt Us Later In Our Lives; They Sit Undramatically By The Roadside Like Poor Beggars, And We See Them Only From The Corners Of Our Eyes, If We See Them At All. The Idea That They Have Been Waiting There For Us Rarely Crosses Our Minds. Yet They Do Wait, And When We Have Passed, They Gather Up Their Bundles Of Memory And Fall In Behind, Treading In Our Footsteps And Catching Up, Little By Little.

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.

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.

They're Animals, All Right. But Why Are You So Goddam Sure That Makes Us Human Beings?

He Lay Back, Put His Arm Over His Eyes, And Tried To Hold Onto The Anger, Because The Anger Made Him Feel Brave. A Brave Man Could Think. A Coward Couldn't.

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

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

Life Is A Wheel, And If You Wait Long Enough, It Always Comes Back Around To Where It Started.

Yet Suppose Further. Suppose That All Worlds, All Universes, Met At A Single Nexus, A Single Pylon, A Tower. And Within It, A Stairway, Perhaps Rising To The Godhead Itself. Would You Dare Climb To The Top, Gunslinger? Could It Be That Somewhere Above All Of Endless Reality, There Exists A Room?...' You Dare Not.' And In The Gunslinger's Mind, Those Words Echoed: You Dare Not.

Time Is A Face On The Water.

My Feeling Of The Whole Genre, Of The Terror Tale, Is This: The Best Thing That You Can Do For The Readers In This Field Is To Terrify Them. It Is Something That Is Intellectual, It Happens In Your Mind.

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

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

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.

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.

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

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

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

Andy Dufresne: 'that's The Beauty Of Music. They Can't Get That From You...haven't You Ever Felt That Way About Music?' Red: 'i Played A Mean Harmonica As A Younger Man. Lost Interest In It Though. Didn't Make Much Sense In Here.' Andy: 'here's Where It Makes The Most Sense. You Need It So You Don't Forget.' Red: 'forget?' Andy: 'forget That...there Are Places In This World That Aren't Made Out Of Stone. That There's Something Inside...that They Can't Get To, That They Can't Touch. That's Yours.' Red: 'what're You Talking About?' Andy: 'hope.'

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