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I Think We'd All Like To Believe That After We Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil, That There's Going To Be Something On The Other Side Because For Most Of Us, I Know For Me, Life Is So Rich, So Colorful And Sensual And Full Of Good Things, Things To Read, Things To Eat, Things To Watch, Places To Go, New Experiences, That I Don't Want To Think That You Just Go To Darkness.

-Stephen King

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I Think We'd All

Stephen King

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I Think We'd All Like To Believe That After We Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil, That There's Going To Be Something On The Other Side Because For Most Of Us, I Know For Me, Life Is So Rich, So Colorful And Sensual And Full Of Good Things, Things To Read, Things To Eat, Things To Watch, Places To Go, New Experiences, That I Don't Want To Think That You Just Go To Darkness.

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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.

I Was Built With A Love Of The Night And The Unquiet Coffin.

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.

For Me, That Emotional Payoff Is What It’s All About. I Want You To Laugh Or Cry When You Read A Story...or Do Both At The Same Time. I Want Your Heart, In Other Words. If You Want To Learn Something, Go To School.

The Color White Is The Absence Of Memory.

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.

Writing Is Seduction.

Your Hair Is Winter Fire January Embers My Heart Burns There, Too.

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.

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

I'm A Slow Reader, But I Usually Get Through Seventy Or Eighty Books A Year, Most Fiction. I Don't Read In Order To Study The Craft; I Read Because I Like To Read

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

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.

...belief Has A Second Edge. If There Are Ten Thousand Medieval Peasants Who Create Vampires By Believing Them Real, There May Be One - Probably A Child - Who Will Imagine The Stake Necessary To Kill It. But A Stake Is Only Stupid Wood; The Mind Is The Mallet Which Drives It Home.

It's A Little Place On The Pacific Ocean. You Know What The Mexicans Say About The Pacific? They Say It Has No Memory. That's Where I Want To Live The Rest Of My Life. A Warm Place With No Memory.

Whenever I Publish A Book, I Feel Like A Trapper Caught By The Iroquois. They're All Lined Up With Tomahawks, And The Idea Is To Run Through With Your Head Down, And Everybody Gets To Take A Swing. They Hit You In The Head, The Back, The Ass, And The Balls.

I Have The World's Best Job. I Get Paid To Hang Out In My Imagination All Day.

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.

Go Now. Our Journey Is Done. And May We Meet Again, In The Clearing, At The End Of The Path.

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

Life Isn't Always A Butcher's Game. Sometimes The Prizes Are Real. Sometimes They're Precious.

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

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.

Close Your Eyes And Click Your Heals Three Times...because There's No Place Like Dome.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter Is Populated With Vivid, Sympathetic Characters, And Driven By Terrors Both Human And Supernatural. It's The Kind Of Book That's Impossible To Put Down Once It Has Been Picked Up. It Kept Me Reading Far Into The Night. Straub Builds Otherworldly Terror Without Ever Losing Touch With His Attractive Cast Of Youngsters, Who Age Beautifully. Put This One High On Your List.

It Starts With This: Put Your Desk In The Corner, And Every Time You Sit Down There To Write, Remind Yourself Why It Isn't In The Middle Of The Room. Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

She Had Never Dreamed There Could Be So Much Pain In A Life When There Was Nothing Physically Wrong. She Hurt All The Time.

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

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

The Thing Under My Bed Waiting To Grab My Ankle Isn't Real. I Know That, And I Also Know That If I'm Careful To Keep My Foot Under The Covers, It Will Never Be Able To Grab My Ankle.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

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.

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

Scaring People, Especially In Our Day And Time, Is One Of The Hardest Things On Earth, As Far As I Am Concerned.

The Definition Of An Asshole Is Someone Who Doesn't Believe What He Is Seeing.

I Think There Ought To Be Some Serious Discussion By Smart People, Really Smart People, About Whether Or Not Proliferation Of Things Like The Smoking Gun And Tmz And Youtube And The Whole Celebrity Culture Is Healthy. 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. I Mean, I Know People Who Can Tell You Who Won The Last Four Seasons On American Idol And They Don't Know Who Their [bleeping] Representatives Are.

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

She Nods. You're Good For The Ones You Love. You Want To Be Good For The Ones You Love, Because You Know That Your Time With Them Will End Up Being Too Short, No Matter How Long It Is.

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

He Did It (listened) As The World's Most Charming And Magnetic People Do, Always Asking The Right Question At The Right Time, Never Fidgeting Or Taking His Eyes From The Speaker's Face, Making The Other Guy Feel Like The Most Knowledgeable, Brilliant, And Intellectually Savvy Person On The Planet.

When I Knew I Was Going To Be Able To Write Full Time, I Wondered, "what's Going To Happen To The Relationships Within My Family?" Are They Going To Change? Is It Going To Be The Kind Of Deal Where You Say, "i Can't Take This! Get Me Out Of Here! I Can't Stand These Screaming Kids!" The Way It Turned Out Was, I Was Able To Change The Diapers Okay, After I Stuck The Pin Through My Fingers A Few Times. I Had A Dawning Realization That Children Are Not Particularly Hard To Deal With.

The Mystery Of The Universe Is Not Time But Size.

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Rightly Tired Of The Pain İ Hear And Feel, Boss... Where We's Comin From Or Goin To Or Why... If İ Could End It, İ Would. But İ Can't.

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This Inhuman Place Makes Human Monsters.

Sometimes There Is Absolutely No Difference At All Between Salvation And Damnation.

Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie.

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

She Ran Out Of Her Marriage The Way A Woman Can Run Out Of A Pair Of Sandals When She Decides To Let Go And Really Dash.

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

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

...they Came To See What Happened To Their Town, To See If It Was Indeed Lying Burnt And Bleeding. Many Of Them Also Came To Die.

Do I Know What People Say? Sure. I Shrug It Off. What Else Can You Do? Stop People From Talking? You Might As Well Try To Stop The Wind From Blowing.

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

Legends Grow Beards, And Twenty-three Years Is Plenty Of Time To Grow A Long One.

Time Was A Face On The Water, And Like The Great River Before Them, It Did Nothing But Flow.

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.

Strong Delusions Travel Like Cold Germs On A Sneeze.

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

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

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

Just Remember That Dumbo Didn't Need The Feather; The Magic Was In Him.

You Have To Go Where The Book Leads You.

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

There Is No Tyrant As Merciless As Pain.

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.

I'm Not Making An Enemy; I'm Keepin' One.

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Smoke And A Story's Just A Story

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. - Japanese Proverb

Japanese Proverbs

Writers Are Often The Worst Judges Of What They Have Written.

Like Some Dogs: Kick Them Once And They Never Trust You Again, No Matter How Nice You Are To Them.

It's A Tough Life If You Don't Weaken.

I Still Believe In The Resilience Of The Human Heart And The Essential Validity Of Love;i Still Believe That Connections Between People Can Be Made And That The Spirits Which Inhabit Us Sometimes Touch. I Still Believe That The Cost Of These Connections Is Horribly, Outrageously High... And I Still Believe That The Value Received Far Outweighs The Price Which Must Be Paid. (from Introductory Notes.)

They Were Nice Enough People And All, But There Wasn't Much Love In Them. Because They Were Too Busy Being Afraid. Love Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where There Was Only Fear, Just As Plants Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where It Was Always Dark.

Do You Need Someone To Make You A Paper Badge With The Word Writer On It Before You Can Believe You Are One? God I Hope Not.

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...

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Knowing Nothing

Outlines Are The Last Resource Of Bad Fiction Writers Who Wish To God They Were Writing Masters' Theses.

Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

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Nobody Likes To See A Stupid Guy Wise Up.

I Think That Friendship Always Makes Us Feel Such Sweet Gratitude, Because The World Almost Always Seems Like A Very Hard Desert, And The Flowers That Grow There Seem To Grow Against Such High Odds.

We Never Cease Wanting What We Want, Whether It's Good For Us Or Not.

Show Me A Man Or A Woman Alone And I'll Show You A Saint. Give Me Two And They'll Fall In Love. Give Me Three And They'll Invent The Charming Thing We Call 'society'. Give Me Four And They'll Build A Pyramid. Give Me Five And They'll Make One An Outcast. Give Me Six And They'll Reinvent Prejudice. Give Me Seven And In Seven Years They'll Reinvent Warfare. Man May Have Been Made In The Image Of God, But Human Society Was Made In The Image Of His Opposite Number, And Is Always Trying To Get Back Home.

Falling In Love

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.

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

Sooner Or Later

If You Can't Laugh When Things Go Bad--laugh And Put On A Little Carnival--then You're Either Dead Or Wishing You Were.

The Advantage Of Horror Books Is To Take The Reader And Cut Him Out Of The Pack And Work On Him One On One. It Has Its Advantages Because The People That Are There In The Movie Theater Really Are A Mob. If You Get One Guy Alone You Can Do A More Efficient Job Of Scaring Him.

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.

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

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.

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.

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

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

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

It Was Life, Often Unsatisfying, Frequently Cruel, Usually Boring, Sometimes Beautiful, Once In A While Exhilarating.

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.

It's "merry Christmas" At Our House. Whatever It Is At Yours, Have A Happy One. And Be Good To Somebody.

...stupidity Is One Of The Two Things We See Most Clearly In Retrospect. The Other Is Missed Chances.

All You Need To Do Is Hold On Tight...and Believe.

We'll Just Have To Get Along. That's What People Do, You Know? They Just Get Along. And Try To Help Each Other.

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.

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

And In Real Life Endings Aren't Always Neat, Whether They're Happy Endings, Or Whether They're Sad Endings.

The Real Importance Of Reading Is That It Creates An Ease & Intimacy With The Process Of Writing... It Also Offers You A Constantly Growing Knowledge Of What Has Been Done And What Hasn't, What Is Trite And What Is Fresh, What Works And What Lies There Dying (or Dead) On The Page. The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives.

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

Description Is What Makes The Reader A Sensory Participant In The Story.

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

I Saw Something Even More Beautiful Than A Sense Of Humor: An Appreciation For Life’s Essential Absurdity.

I Think Of Fear As A Survival Function, And In The Stories That I Write, The Only Thing That I've Tried To Do Is Provide People With Nightmares Which Are Really Safe Places To Put Those Fears For A While Because You Can Say Afterwards That Uh, That, That Well It Was All Just Make-believe Anyway, So I Just Took My Emotions For A Walk.

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

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.

I Think That We're All Mentally Ill. Those Of Us Outside The Asylums Only Hide It A Little Better - And Maybe Not All That Much Better After All.

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

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

Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

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

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.

How Life Did Imitate Art Sometimes. And The Cruder The Art, The Closer The Imitation.

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

The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

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

When You Write A Story, You’re Telling Yourself The Story,” He Said. “when You Rewrite, Your Main Job Is Taking Out All The Things That Are Not The Story.

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.

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?"

Good Writing Is Often About Letting Go Of Fear And Affectation. Affectation Itself, Beginning With The Need To Define Some Sorts Of Writing As 'good' And Other Sorts As 'bad' Is Fearful Behavior.

It's A Hard Life If You Don't Weaken.

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.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

In Small Towns People Scent The Wind With Noses Of Uncommon Keenness.

Men! She Could Not Understand Why So Many Women Feared Them. Hadn't The Gods Made Them With The Most Vurnerable Part Of Their Guts Hanging Right Out Of Their Bodies, Like A Misplaced Bit Of Bowel? Kick Them There And They Curled Up Like Snails. Caress Them There And Their Brains Melted.

Guys Like Henry And His Buddies Were An Accident Waiting To Happen; The Little Kids' Version Of Floods Or Tornadoes Or Gallstones.

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

I Feel Better In My Mind Because I'm Doing What God Made Me To Do. He Said, 'go Write Books, Steve, And You'll Be Happy.' I'm Happy Now, And That Has Had An Effect On My Life And My Relationship With My Wife And Kids And Even My Friends. I've Always Wanted To Be A Writer.

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

He Could Feel The Pores Of His Body Open Like A Million Mouths And Slurp The Water In Like A Sponge.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them.

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.

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?

The First Real Terror Struck Him Then, And There Was Nothing Supernatural About It. It Was Only A Realization Of How Easy It Was To Trash Your Life. That Was What Was So Scary. You Just Dragged The Fan Up To Everything You Had Spent The Years Raking Together And Turned The Motherfucker On.

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

Your First Impulse Is To Share Good News, Your Second Is To Club Someone With It.

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

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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 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?

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

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.

Put An Egg In Your Shoe And Beat It, Make Like A Tree And Leave, Imitate An Amoeba And Split.

Humans Were Built To Look Back; That's Why We Have That Swivel Joint In Our Necks

Outside, A Gusty October Breeze Was Combing Leaves From The Trees And Sending Them Across Her Backyard In Colorful Skitters.

I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy.

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.

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

For A Moment Everything Was Clear, And When That Happens You See That The World Is Barely There At All. Don't We All Secretly Know This? It's A Perfectly Balanced Mechanism Of Shouts And Echoes Pretending To Be Wheels And Cogs, A Dreamclock Chiming Beneath A Mystery-glass We Call Life. Behind It? Below It And Around It? Chaos, Storms. Men With Hammers, Men With Knives, Men With Guns. Women Who Twist What They Cannot Dominate And Belittle What They Cannot Understand. A Universe Of Horror And Loss Surrounding A Single Lighted Stage Where Mortals Dance In Defiance Of The Dark.

I Never Had Any Friends Later On Like The Ones I Had When I Was 12 - Jesus, Did You?

I Have To Remind Myself That Some Birds Aren’t Meant To Be Caged. Their Feathers Are Just Too Bright.

Oh Christ, He Groaned To Himself, If This Is The Stuff Adults Have To Think About I Never Want To Grow Up

The Wife Whose Sweetly Given Reply In The Face Of Any Problem Would Be, "whatever You Think Is Best, Dear." Women, Take Note: A Wife Like That Never Needs To Fear Bubbling Away The Last Of Her Life Through A Cut Throat.

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.

It Hurt, Of Course, But More Often Than Not The Best Things Do, I've Found.

Mister, We Deal In Lead.

Everyone Needs A Hobby, He Said. And Everyone Needs A Miracle Or Two, Just To Prove Life Is More Than Just One Long Trudge From The Cradle To The Grave.

But You Don't Do It. Because Guys Like Us, Red, We Know There's A Third Choice. An Alternative To Staying Simon-pure Or Bathing In The Filth And The Slime. It's The Alternative That Grown-ups All Over The World Pick. You Balance Off Your Walk Through The Hog-wallow Against What It Gains You. You Choose The Lesser Of Two Evils And Try To Keep Your Good Intentions In Front Of You. And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

So Okay - There You Are In Your Room With The Shade Down And The Door Shut And The Plug Pulled Out Of The Base Of The Telephone. You've Blown Up Your Tv And Committed Yourself To A Thousand Words A Day, Come Hell Or High Water. Now Comes The Big Question: What Are You Going To Write About? And The Equally Big Answer: Anything You Damn Well Want.

Remember That The Truth Is In The Details. No Matter How You See The World Or What Style It Imposes On Your Work As An Artist, The Truth Is In The Details. Of Course The Devil's There, Too-everyone Says So-but Maybe Truth And The Devil Are Words For The Same Thing. It Could Be You Know.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

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

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

The Exhilaration Was Hard To Explain. It Was A Lonely Feeling — A Somehow Melancholy Feeling. He Was Outside; He Passed On The Wings Of The Wind, And None Of The People Beyond The Brightly Lighted Squares Of Their Windows Saw Him. They Were Inside, Inside Where There Was Light And Warmth. They Didn't Know He Had Passed Them; Only He Knew. It Was A Secret Thing.

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.

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

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.

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

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

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.

It's A Long Way Back To Eden, Sweetheart, So Don't Sweat The Small Stuff.

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.

In The Stutter-flashes Of Light, The Clouds Look Like Huge Transparent Brains Filled With Bad Thoughts.

Zombies Are The New Vampire.

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

There Are Really Very Few Economies Of Scale In Centralising Or Standardising Advertising.

Carrie Was A Terrific Piece Of Work. At The End Of The Movie Comes, When Amy Irving Kneels Down To Put The Flowers On Carrie's Grave, A Hand Comes Up Through The Grave And Seizes Her By The Arm. The Audience Went To The Roof, Totally To The Roof. It Was Just The Most Amazing Reaction. And I Thought, 'we Have A Monster Hit On Our Hands. Brian De Palma Has Done Something New. He's Actually Created A Shock Ending That Shocks An Audience That Was Ready For A Horror Film.' And There Were Several People Who Did It After That.

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.

But Then Fall Comes, Kicking Summer Out On Its Treacherous Ass As It Always Does One Day Sometime After The Midpoint Of September, It Stays Awhile Like An Old Friend That You Have Missed. It Settles In The Way An Old Friend Will Settle Into Your Favorite Chair And Take Out His Pipe And Light It And Then Fill The Afternoon With Stories Of Places He Has Been And Things He Has Done Since Last He Saw You.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Brain Is A Muscle That Can Move The World.

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.

The Situation Comes First...the Characters...come Next...[then] Begin To Narrate.

I Have Grown Into A Bestsellasaurus Rex - A Big, Stumbling Book-beast That Is Loved When It Shits Money And Hated When It Tramples Houses... I Started Out As A Storyteller; Along The Way I Became An Economic Force.

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