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I Think What You Do Is, You Keep Your Sensors Open. And It's - The More That You Do The Job, The More You Come To Understand In A Kind Of Intuitive Way That You're Always - You Know, Your Radar Is On. And The Thing Is Going Around And Around And Around. And It's Not Picking Up Any Blips.

-Stephen King

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I Think What You

Stephen King

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I Think What You Do Is, You Keep Your Sensors Open. And It's - The More That You Do The Job, The More You Come To Understand In A Kind Of Intuitive Way That You're Always - You Know, Your Radar Is On. And The Thing Is Going Around And Around And Around. And It's Not Picking Up Any Blips.

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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?

If I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross Out. I'm Not Proud.

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.

Things Were Going Very Fast Now. Too Fast To Suit Him. Fantasy And Reality Had Merged.

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It Is, After All, The Dab Of Grit That Seeps Into An Oyster's Shell That Makes The Pearl, Not Pearl-making Seminars With Other Oysters.

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Too Often, In Novels That Are Speculative, God Is A Kind Of Kryptonite, And That's About All That It Is, And It Goes Back To Dracula, Where Someone Dumps A Crucifix In Count Dracula's Face, And He Pulls Away And Runs Back Into His House. That's Not Religion. That's Some Kind Of Juju, Like A Talisman.

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

I Try To Create Sympathy For My Characters, Then Turn The Monsters Loose.

Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

Support Systems

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.

There Is Zero, And There Is Eternity, And There Is Mortality, But There Is No Ultimate.

Words Create Sentences; Sentences Create Paragraphs; Sometimes Paragraphs Quicken And Begin To Breathe.

We Make Up Horrors To Help Us Cope With The Real Ones.

A Person Could See A Lot Without Ever Leaving His Own Living Room. Especially If He Had The Right Tools.

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.

A Marriage Was Like A House Under Constant Construction, Each Year Seeing The Completion Of New Rooms. A First-year Marriage Was A Cottage; One That Had Gone On For Twenty-seven Years Was A Huge And Rambling Mansion. There Were Bound To Be Crannies And Storage Spaces, Most Of Them Dusty And Abandoned, Some Containing A Few Unpleasant Relics You Would Just As Soon You Hadn't Found. But That Was No Biggie. You Either Threw Those Relics Out Or Took Them To Goodwill.

Rationalism Is The Idea That We Can Ever Understand Anything About The State Of Being. It's A Deathtrip. It Always Has Been. . . . And If Rationalism Is A Deathtrip, Then Irrationalism Might Very Well Be A Lifetrip . . . At Least Until It Proves Otherwise.

At Nineteen, It Seems To Me, One Has A Right To Be Arrogant; Time Has Usually Not Begun Its Stealthy And Rotten Subtractions. It Takes Away Your Hair And Your Jump-shot, According To A Popular Country Song, But In Truth It Takes Away A Lot More Than That.

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

Some Tears Have To Be Cried No Matter What The Hour- Until They Are, They Simply Rave And Burn Inside.

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.

The Past Is Obdurate.

She Didn't See Him At First. She Was Watching The Dancers. Her Color Was High, And There Were Deep Dimples At The Corners Of Her Mouth. She Looked Nine Miles Out Of Place, But He Had Never Loved Her More. This Was Willa On The Edge Of A Smile.

How Does It Happen That A Writer Who's Not Even Very Good - And I Can Say That, I've Read Four Or Five Of His Books - Gets To Be In Charge Of The World's Destiny? Or Of The Entire Universe's?" If He's Not Very Good, Why Didn't You Stop At One?" Mrs. Tassenbaum Smiled. "touché. He Is Readable, I'll Give Him That - Tells A Good Story.

I've Been Typed As A Horror Writer, And I've Always Said To People, "i Don't Care What You Call Me As Long As The Checks Don't Bounce And The Family Gets Fed."

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.

I Know Life Is Hard, I Think Everyone Knows That In Their Hearts, But Why Dos It Have To Be Cruel, As Well? Why Does It Have To Bite?

Some Things It Don't Pay To Be Curious About.

The Sandwich He Made Was Bologna And Cheese, His Favorite. All The Sandwiches He Made Were His Favorites; That Was One Of The Advantages Of Being Single.

Elvis Presley's Talent Brightened Millions Of Lives. He Widened The Horizons Of My World Certainly. The First Record I Ever Owned Was A 78 Rpm Of "hound Dog" Backed By "don't Be Cruel" And When I Listened To Those Tunes I Felt About Ten Feet Tall And I Grinned So Hard That I Felt Like The Corners Of My Mouth Would Meet In The Back And The Tip Of My Head Would Simply Topple Off. All I Know About Rock And Roll Is That It Makes People Feel Good. Elvis Presley More Than Made Me Feel Good, He Enriched My Life And Made It Better.

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.

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.

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.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

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.

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.

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.

When You Sit Down To Write, Write. Don't Do Anything Else Except Go To The Bathroom, And Only Do That If It Absolutely Cannot Be Put Off.

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—

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

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.

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

Writing Fiction, Especially A Long Work Of Fiction, Can Be A Difficult, Lonely Job; It's Like Crossing The Atlantic Ocean In A Bathtub. There's Plenty Of Opportunity For Self-doubt.

Seven, Richie Thought. That's The Magic Number. There Has To Be Seven Of Us. That's The Way It's Supposed To Be.

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

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.

The Color White Is The Absence Of Memory.

Time Is A Face On The Water.

His Name Is Legion. He Is The King Of Nowhere.

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

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

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.

Overhead Was A Sky Blacker Than Jewlers' Velvet, And A Billion Stars Screamed Down.

I Believe In Evil, But All My Life I've Gone Back And Forth About Whether Or Not There's An Outside Evil, Whether Or Not There's A Force In The World That Really Wants To Destroy Us, From The Inside Out, Individually And Collectively.

Writing Is Not Life, But I Think That Sometimes It Can Be A Way Back To Life.

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

I Am The Literary Equivalent Of A Big Mac And Fries.

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

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.

...maybe The World Needs A Cadre Of Smartasses To Liven Things Up, Who Knows?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Twas Something Else. I Had Come To Hate Her, You See. I Had Come To Wish Her Dead, And That Was What Held Me Back.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You Cannot Friend A Hawk, They Said, Unless You Are A Hawk Yourself, Alone And Only A Sojourner In The Land, Without Friends Or The Need Of Them.

This Is A Short Book Because Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit.

The Horror Genre Is An Extremely Delicate Thing. You Can Talk To Filmmakers And Even Psychologists Who've Studied The Genre, And Even They Don't Understand What Works Or What Doesn't Work. More Importantly, They Don't Understand Why It Works When It Works.

Delicate Things

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

He Would Write It For The Reason He Felt That All Great Literature, Fiction And Nonfiction, Was Written: Truth Comes Out, In The End It Always Comes Out. He Would Write It Because He Felt He Had To.

I Think Most Of Us Are Fascinated By The Macabre And By The Weird And Even The Nastiness That Comes Along.

All Right I Think We've Been Down Here In The Dark Long Enough. There's A Whole Other World Upstairs. Take My Hand Constant Reader And I'll Be Happy To Lead You Back Into The Sunshine. I'm Happy To Go There Because I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

I Have Always Felt A Little Bit Uncomfortable With Question [why I'm Write These Stories]. It's Not A Question That You Would Ask A Guy That Writes Detective Stories Or The Guy That Writes Mystery Stories, Or Westerns, Or Whatever. But It Is Asked Of The Writer Of Horror Stories Because It Seems That There Is Something Nasty About Our Love For Horror Stories, Or Boogies, Ghosts And Goblins, Demons And Devils.

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.

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

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane. Put More Than Two Of Us In A Room, We Pick Sides And Start Dreaming Up Reasons To Kill One Another. Why Do You Think We Invented Politics And Religion?

The Trust Of The Innocent Is The Liar's Most Useful Tool.

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.

There Is A Story In The Book Night Shift, Called 'the Mangler,' About A Laundry Machine That Takes On A Sort Of Malignant Life. I Worked In A Laundry For About A Year And A Half After I Got Out Of College. It Was The Only Job I Could Find To Support My Wife And Our First Child. There Was A Fellow There That Had No Hands Or Forearms. He Simply Had Hooks. This Is One Of The Things That They Don't Tell You About When You Become Management. You Have To Wear A Tie. It Was This Fellow's Tie That Did Him In.

A Library Card Is Good To Have, You Can Never Have Too Much Id.

Politics Always Change. Stories Never Do.

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

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 Thought It Was Great Fun To Scare People. I Also Knew It Was Socially Acceptable Because There Were A Lot Of Horror Movies Out There.

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

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.

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

You Want To Remember That While You're Judging The Book, The Book Is Also Judging You.

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

I Don't Want To Speak Too Disparagingly Of My Generation (actually I Do, We Had A Chance To Change The World But Opted For The Home Shopping Network Instead).

Rage-the Biggest, Truest Rage Of Her Adult Life-had Invaded Her Like A Fever, But It Wasn't Like Any Fever She Had Known Previously. It Circulated Like Weird Serum, Cold On The Right Side Of Her Body, Then Hot On The Left, Where Her Heart Was. It Seemed To Come Nowhere Near Her Head, Which Remained Clear.

In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That’s What Wireman Says.

On The Day Of My Judgment, When I Stand Before God, And He Asks Me Why Did I Kill One Of His True Miracles, What Am I Gonna Say? That It Was My Job? My Job?

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

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

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

The Thought Process Can Never Be Complete Without Articulation.

If You Don't Have The Time To Read, You Don't Have The Time Or The Tools To Write.

If You Liked Being A Teenager, There's Something Really Wrong With You.

Being A Teenager

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

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

Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit. Fiction Writers, Present Company Included, Don’t Understand Very Much About What They Do—not Why It Works When It’s Good, Not Why It Doesn’t When It’s Bad.

As With All Other Aspects Of The Narrative Art, You Will Improve With Practice, But Practice Will Never Make You Perfect. Why Should It? What Fun Would That Be?

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

This Is Probably The Single Great Subject Of Horror Fiction: Our Need To Cope With A Mystery That Can Be Understood Only With The Aid Of A Helpful Imagination.

Anger Is The Most Useless Emotion," Henchick Intoned, "destructive To The Mind And Hurtful To The Heart.

If Anyone Ever Asks You What Panic Is, Now You Can Tell Them: An Emotional Blank Spot That Leaves You Feeling As If You've Been Sucking On A Mouthful Of Pennies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People With A High Tolerance For Boredom Can Get A Lot Of Thinking Done.

Bloom Never Pissed Me Off Because There Are Critics Out There, And He's One Of Them, Who Take Their Ignorance About Popular Culture As A Badge Of Intellectual Prowess.

The Unconscious Mind Writes Poetry If It's Left Alone.

The Worst Thing You Can Try To Do Is To Steer The Story Once It Gets Going. You Just Kind Of Follow Along And See Where It Goes. That's The Fun.

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

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.

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.

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.

Here I Am, Ninety Years Old And Ready For The Cooling Board, Using A Brand New Macintosh Computer, And There You Sit, Twenty-two And Gorgeous, Fresh As A New Peach, Yet Scrawling On A Yellow Legal Pad Like An Old Maid In A Victorian Romance.

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.

No One Can Tell What Goes On In Between The Person You Were And The Person You Become. No One Can Chart That Blue And Lonely Section Of Hell. There Are No Maps Of The Change. You Just Come Out The Other Side. Or You Don't.

You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

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

I've Spent My Whole Life Doing Some Things Because They Were Logical And Not Doing Others Because They Were Not. I've Seen What Happens When People Act On Intuition, Or For Illogical Reasons. Sometimes The Results Are Ludicrous And Embarrassing; More Often They Are Simply Horrible. But Here I Am, Just The Same, Behaving Like A Crackbrained Crystal Gazer.

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

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

Writing's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

I Understand That Each One Of Us Works At A Different Speed, And Has A Slightly Different Process. I Understand That These Writers Are Painstaking, Wanting Each Sentence-each Word-to Carry Weight... I Know It’s Not Laziness, But Respect For The Work, And I Understand From My Own Work That Haste Makes Waste. But I Also Understand That Life Is Short, And That In The End, None Of Us Is Prolific. 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

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.

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

But In High School The Business Of Irrevocable Choices Began. Doors Slipped Shut With A Faint Locking Click That Was Only Heared Clearly In The Dreams Of Later Years.

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?

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

These Self-appointed Deacons In The Church Of Latter-day American Literature Seem To Regard Generosity (of Words) With Suspicion, Texture With Dislike, And Any Broad Literary Stroke With Outright Hate. The Result Is A Strange And Arid Literary Climate Where A Meaningless Little Fingernail Paring Like Nicholson Baker's Vox Becomes An Object Of Fascinated Debate And Dissection, And A Truly Ambitious American Novel Like Matthew's Heart Of The Country Is All But Ignored.

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.

Some Of This Book—perhaps Too Much—has Been About How I Learned To Do It. Much Of It Has Been About How You Can Do It Better. The Rest Of It—and Perhaps The Best Of It—is A Permission Slip: You Can, You Should, And If You're Brave Enough To Start, You Will. Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

The World, Although Well-lighted With Fluorescents And Incandescent Bulbs And Neon, Is Still Full Of Odd Dark Corners And Unsettling Nooks And Crannies.

Bad Chances Were Better Than No Chances.

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

If Something Is Accessible To A Lot Of People, It's Got To Be Dumb Because Most People Are Dumb.

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

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

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

I Think Most Of Us Can Remember From Our Own Childhood, Just In The Disney Cartoons, Things That Frightened Us Profoundly. For Me It Was Bambi, The Scene When The Forest Was On Fire. That Was Something I Had Nightmares About. I Can't Imagine Being A Little Kid Of Eight And Seeing Night Of The Living Dead With Living Corpses Eating The Flesh Of Living People.

I Think Part Of Being A Parent Is Trying To Kill Your Kids.

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

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

"you Need Hedges.""hedges," I Said, Bemused. "yes, Edgar." He Looked Surprised And A Little Disappointed, As If I Had Failed To Understand A Very Simple Concept. "hedges Against The Night."

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.

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.

The Man In Black Travels With Your Soul In His Pocket.

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.

I Dreamed Of You. I Dreamed You Were Wandering In The Dark, And So Was I. We Found Each Other. We Found Each Other In The Dark.

I Get Inspiration, A Lot Of Times, From Very Commonplace Things That Just Strike A Chord And Develop Themselves In The Subconscious.

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.'

Good Description Is A Learned Skill, One Of The Prime Reasons Why You Cannot Succeed Unless You Read A Lot And Write A Lot. It’s Not Just A Question Of How-to, You See; It’s Also A Question Of How Much To. Reading Will Help You Answer How Much, And Only Reams Of Writing Will Help You With The How. You Can Learn Only By Doing.

Each Life Makes Its Own Immitation Of Immortality.

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.

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

What's Been Tried Once Had Been Tried Once Before... And Before... And Before...

You Can't Polish A Turd.

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.

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.

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

It's Best To Be Ruthless With The Past.

Jake Went In, Aware That He Had, For The First Time In Three Weeks, Opened A Door Without Hoping Madly To Find Another World On The Other Side. A Bell Jingled Overhead. The Mild, Spicy Smell Of Old Books Hit Him, And The Smell Was Somehow Like Coming Home.

I Like To Always Stop With A Couple Of Pages That I Haven't - That Are Just Raw Copy, Where I Haven't Touched It, I Haven't Tried To Revise It, I Haven't Tried To Polish It. It's Like Having A Little Bit Of A Runway. The Next Day When You Sit Down, You Have The Comfort Of Saying, Well, I Have Got A Little Bit Here, Used To Be In The Typewriter. Now It's In The Magic Box, The Computer.

When You Put On A Clown Suit And A Rubber Nose, Nobody Has Any Idea What You Look Like Inside.

Do Any Of Us, Except In Our Dreams, Truly Expect To Be Reunited With Our Hearts' Deepest Loves, Even When They Leave Us Only For Minutes, And On The Most Mundane Of Errands? No, Not At All. Each Time They Go From Our Sight We In Our Secret Hearts Count Them As Dead. Having Been Given So Much, We Reason, How Could We Expect Not To Be Brought As Low As Lucifer For The Staggering Presumption Of Our Love?

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

Maybe That's Why God Made Us Kids First And Built Us Close To The Ground, Because He Knows You Got To Fall Down A Lot And Bleed A Lot Before You Learn That One Simple Lesson. You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

...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.

Paul Edgecomb: What Do You Want Me To Do John? I'll Do It. You Want Me To Let You Walk Out Of Here And See How Far You Get? John Coffey: Now Why Would You Want To Do A Foolish Thing Like That? Paul Edgecomb: When I Die And I Stand Before God Awaiting Judgment And He Asks Me Why I Let One Of His Miracles Die, What Am I Gonna Say, That It Was My Job?

Rewrite Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

Amateurs Sit And Wait For Inspiration, The Rest Of Us Just Get Up And Go To Work.

Procrastination

Sometimes The Embers Are Better Than The Campfire.

As A Rule, I Don't Worry About Genre. I Just Want To Tell A Good Story, With Characters That Interest Me And My Readers.

Strong Delusions Travel Like Cold Germs On A Sneeze.

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.

Poe Was The First Writer To Write About Main Characters Who Were Bad Guys Or Who Were Mad Guys, And Those Are Some Of My Favorite Stories.

I Enjoy Going Back And Forth Between Plays And Novels. It`s Like Having A Wife And A Mistress. Books Are The Wife; Plays, The Mistress.

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

Eddie Discovered One Of His Childhood's Great Truths. Grownups Are The Real Monsters, He Thought.

You Could Not Turn Off Love- Even The Rather Absent, Sometimes Taken For Granted Love- The Way You'd Turn Off A Faucet. Love Ran From The Heart And The Heart Had It's Own Imperatives

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'd Like To Take A Motorcycle Trip Across Europe, Maybe Even Across China. Of Course I'd Also Like To Broker A Peace Agreement Between The Israelis And The Palestinians, But It's Important To Put Ceilings On One's Ambitions.

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