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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.

-Stephen King

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I've Spent My Whole

Stephen King

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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.

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People Want To Know Why I Do This, Why I Write Such Gross Stuff. I Like To Tell Them I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy... And I Keep It In A Jar On My Desk.

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.

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Being A Teenager

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.

Mornings Belong To Whatever Is New; The Current Composition. Afternoons Are For Naps And Letters.

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

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

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.

Battles That Last Five Minutes Spawn Legends That Live A Thousand Years.

Being Sorry For Myself Is A Luxury I Can't Afford.

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

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

I Think That's What People Most Always Do With The Stuff They Can't Make Out - Just Forget It.

With Six Weeks' Worth Of Recuperation Time, You'll Also Be Able To See Any Glaring Holes In The Plot Or Character Development. And Listen--if You Spot A Few Of These Big Holes, You Are Forbidden To Feel Depressed About Them Or To Beat Up On Yourself. Screw-ups Happen To The Best Of Us.

I Am, When You Stop To Think Of It, A Member Of A Fairly Select Group: The Final Handful Of American Novelists Who Learned To Read And Write Before They Learned To Eat A Daily Helping Of Video Bullshit.

Every Man Or Woman Who Loves Him, They Hate Him Too, Because He's A Hard God, A Jealous God.

Jesus Watches From The Wall, But His Face Is Cold As Stone, And If He Loves Me As She Tells Me Why Do I Feel So All Alone?

Why Does Everyone Think That I Am A Cruel And Insensitive Man? I Mean, Come On, I Have Kids... On My Desk In Little Jars!

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

He's A Very Nice Man And All That, Easy To Get Along With, Fun, He Never Makes Me Cry. But Is That Love? I Mean, Is That All There Is To It? Even When You Learned To Ride Your Two-wheeler, You Had To Fall Off A Few Times And Scrape Both Knees. Call It A Rite Of Passage. And That Was Just A Little Thing.

I Don't Want You To Apologize For Being Rich; I Want You To Acknowledge That In America, We All Should Have To Pay Our Fair Share.

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

And When There Are Enough Outsiders Together In One Place, A Mystic Osmosis Takes Place And You're Inside.

I'd Like To Learn French Well Enough To Write In That Language.

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.

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.

The Shining. It Was A Good Name, A Comforting Name, Because She Had Always Thought Of It As A Dark Thing.

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

There Had Never Been A Shortage Of Fools In The World

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

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

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.

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

Life Was Such A Wheel That No Man Could Stand Upon It For Long. And It Always, At The End, Came Round To The Same Place Again.

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.

A Cloud-congested Caul That Is Alternately Red, Orange, Vermilion, Purple. Sometimes The Clouds Break Apart In Great, Slow Rafts, Letting Through Beams Of Innocent Yellow Sunlight That Are Bitterly Nostalgic For The Summer That Has Gone By.

By And Large... The Good's An Illusion, Little Fables Folks Tell Themselves So They Can Get Through Their Days Without Screaming Too Much.

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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?

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?

If You Tell Yourself The Great Lie Of Bad Art-that You Are In Charge-your Chance At The Truth Will Be Lost. The Truth Isn't Always Pretty.

The Important Question Has Nothing To Do With Whether The Talk In Your Story Is Sacred Or Profane; The Only Question Is How It Rings On The Page And In Your Ear. If You Expect It To Ring True, Then You Must Talk Yourself. Even More Important, You Must Shut Up And Listen To Others Talk.

I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

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.

Some Birds Are Not Meant To Be Caged, That's All. Their Feathers Are Too Bright, Their Songs Too Sweet And Wild. So You Let Them Go, Or When You Open The Cage To Feed Them They Somehow Fly Out Past You. And The Part Of You That Knows It Was Wrong To Imprison Them In The First Place Rejoices, But Still, The Place Where You Live Is That Much More Drab And Empty For Their Departure.

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.

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.

What If There Were No Grownups? Suppose The Whole Idea Of Grownups Was An Illusion? What If Their Money Was Really Just Playground Marbles, Their Business Deals No More Than Baseball-card Trades, Their Wars Only Games Of Guns In The Park? What If They Were All Still Snotty-nosed Kids Inside Their Suits And Dresses? Christ, That Couldn't Be, Could It? It Was Too Horrible To Think About.

As Always At These Times When He Felt Really In Need Of God The Front Of His Mind Was Serene, But The Deeper Part, Where Faith Did Constant Battle With Doubt, Was Terrified That There Would Be No Answer.

The Battle Between Good And Evil Is Endlessly Fascinating Because We Are Participants Every Day.

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.

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.

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

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

Theres A Constant Struggle Going On About How Much Will Be Illegal And How Much You Will Be Free To Take. Can We Open The Pharmacies? Can We Put Valium And Percodan And Those Sorts Of Things Out On The Shelves? I Wouldn't Take It. I Don't Know.

How Many Times, Over How Many Years, Had He—a Grown Man—asked For The Mercy Of Another Chance? He Was Suddenly So Sick Of Himself, So Revolted, That He Could Have Groaned Aloud.

Description Begins In The Writer’s Imagination, But Should Finish In The Reader’s.

Life Turns On A Dime. Sometimes Towards Us, But More Often It Spins Away, Flirting And Flashing As It Goes: So Long, Honey, It Was Good While It Lasted, Wasn’t It?

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.

The First Movie I Ever Saw Was A Horror Movie. It Was Bambi. When That Little Deer Gets Caught In A Forest Fire, I Was Terrified, But I Was Also Exhilarated.

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).

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.

Don't Ask Me Silly Questions I Won't Play Silly Games I'm Just A Simple Choo Choo Train And I'll Always Be The Same. I Only Want To Race Along Beneath The Bright Blue Sky And Be A Happy Choo Choo Train Until The Day I Die.

I Don't Take Notes; I Don't Outline, I Don't Do Anything Like That. I Just Flail Away At The Goddamn Thing. I'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami. You Can't Sell It As Caviar.

I Never Saw Any Of My Dad's Stories. My Mother Said He Had Piles And Piles Of Manuscripts.

I Write About Things That Scare Me. I've Never Written A Snake Story In My Life. I Myself Have Never Written A Story About Snakes Because They Don't Scare Me. I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me.

And This Wasn’t Lying, Not Really. It Was Leaving Out.

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

What Do You Really Want To Know? Am I Sorry For What I Did? There's Not A Day Goes By I Don't Feel Regret. Not Because I'm In Here, But Because You Think I Should Be. I Look Back On The Way I Was. A Young, Stupid Kid That Committed That Terrible Crime. I Want To Talk To Him. I Want To Try To Talk Some Sense To Him. Tell Him The Way Things Are. But I Can't. That Kid's Long Gone, And This Old Man Is All That's Left.

Small Towns Harbor Small Imaginations.

‎if You Want To Be A Writer, You Must Do Two Things Above All Others: Read A Lot And Write A Lot…reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life…you Cannot Hope To Sweep Someone Else Away By The Force Of Your Writing Until It Has Been Done To You.

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

Readers Have A Loyalty That Cannot Be Matched Anywhere Else In The Creative Arts, Which Explains Why So Many Writers Who Have Run Out Of Gas Can Keep Coasting Anyway, Propelled On To The Bestseller Lists By The Magic Words Author Of On The Covers Of Their Books.

You Learn Best By Reading A Lot And Writing A Lot, And The Most Valuable Lessons Of All Are The Ones You Teach Yourself.

Zombies Are The New Vampire.

I'm Not A Big Fan Of Psychoanalysis: I Think If You Have Mental Problems What You Need Are Good Pills. But I Do Think That If You Have Thinks That Bother You, Things That Are Unresolved, The More That You Talk About Them, Write About Them, The Less Serious They Become.

The Workman Cut To The Left, Still Laying On His Horn, And Roared Around The Drunkenly Weaving Limousine. He Invited The Driver Of The Limo To Perform An Illegal Sex Act On Himself. To Engage In Oral Congress With Various Rodents And Birds. He Articulated His Own Proposal That All Persons Of Negro Blood Return To Their Native Continent. He Expressed His Sincere Belief In The Position The Limo Driver's Soul Would Occupy In The Afterlife. He Finished By Saying That He Believed He Had Met The Limodriver's Mother In A New Orleans House Of Prostitution.

Life Turns On A Dime.

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.

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.

Little By Little, Writers Develop Their Own Styles, Each As Unique As A Fingerprint.

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

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

Give A Man Or Woman Back His Self-respect, And In Most Cases-not All, But Most-you Also Give Back That Person's Ability To Think With At Least Some Clarity.

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

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.

Somebody Said The Prospect Of Eminent Death Has A Wonderful Clarifying Effect On The Mind. And I Don't Know If That's True, But I Do Think It Probably Causes Some Changes, Some Evolution In The Way A Person Works. But On A Day-by-day Basis, I Just Still Enjoy Doing What I'm Doing.

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

A Tragedy Is A Tragedy, And At The Bottom, All Tragedies Are Stupid. Give Me A Choice And I'll Take A Midsummer Night's Dream Over Hamlet Every Time. Any Fool With Steady Hands And A Working Set Of Lungs Can Build Up A House Of Cards And Then Blow It Down, But It Takes A Genius To Make People Laugh.

...stopping A Piece Of Work Just Because It's Hard, Either Emotionally Or Imaginatively, Is A Bad Idea. Sometimes You Have To Go On When You Don't Feel Like It, And Sometimes You're Doing Good Work When If Feels Like All You're Managing Is To Shovel Sh*t From A Sitting Position.

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.

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.

I Think Uncertainty Is Good For Things. Certainty Breeds Complacency And Complacency Means That You Just Sit Somewhere In Your Nice Little Comfortable Suburban House In Michigan, Looking At Cnn And Saying, "oh, Those Poor Immigrant Children That Are All Coming Across The Border. But We Really Can't Have Them Here - That Isn't What God Wants. Let's Send Them All Back To The Drug Cartels." There's A Complacency To It.

In The Year 2025, The Best Men Don't Run For President, They Run For Their Lives. . . .

The Trick Is To Teach Yourself To Read In Small Sips As Well As Long Swallows.

If It's Ok To Register Cars And License Drivers, Why Is It Not Ok To Impose Similar Legal Responsibilities On Gun Owners?

We Never Know Which Lives We Influence, Or When, Or Why. Not Until The Future Eats The Present, Anyway. We Know When It's Too Late.

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

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.

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

Even People Capable Of Living In The Past Don't Really Know What The Future Holds.

In The Years Since, I've Discovered There's A Lot To Be Said For Boredom.

Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

I Write To Find Out What I Think.

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.

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

You’d Be Surprised What A Person Can Live With,” Dan Said.

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.

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?

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

What If I Fall?', Tim Cried. Maerlyn Laughed. 'sooner Or Later, We All Do.

A Person Can Go Along Quite Awhile If They Get A Good Day Every Once And Again.

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

Only Enemies Speak The Truth; Friends And Lovers Lie Endlessly, Caught In The Web Of Duty.

If I Can Get It Down On Paper Without Puking All Over The Word Processor, Then As Far As I'm Concerned, It's Fit To See The Light Of Day.

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.

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.

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

Lightning Flashed Dully Inside The Clouds On The Horizon Making Them Look As If They Had Fireflies Of Their Own, Monster Fireflies The Size Of Dinosaurs.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

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.

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.

A Man With A Good Wife Is The Luckiest Of God's Creatures.

Pride, That Invisible Bone That Keeps The Neck Stiff.

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

I Think It's Relatively Easy For People To Accept Something Like Telepathy Or Precognition Or Teleplasm Because Their Willingness To Believe Doesn't Cost Them Anything. It Doesn't Keep Them Awake Nights. But The Idea That The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them Is Unsettling.

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.

The Wonder Is That So Many Ocds Manage To Live Productive Lives, Just The Same. They Work, They Eat (often Not Enough Or Too Much, It's True), They Go To The Movies, They Make Love To Their Girlfriends And Boyfriends, Their Wives And Husbands... And All The Time Those Birds Are There, Clinging To Them And Pecking Away Little Bits Of Flesh.

Productive Life

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

Although Emotionally Delicate And Eminently Bruisable, Teenagers Are Short On Empathy. That Comes Later In Life, If It Comes At All.

Your Job Isn't To Find These Ideas But To Recognize Them When They Show Up.

The More Fiction You Read And Write, The More You'll Find Your Paragraphs Forming On Their Own.

The Only Religions I Don't Like Are The Ones That Insist Their God Is Bigger Than Your God.

The Old Sleep Poorly. Perhaps They Stand Watch.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest Things To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them - Words Shrink Things That Seemed Limitless When They Were In Your Head To No More Than Living Size When They're Brought Out.

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.

If You Can Read In The 21st Century You Own The World.

He Had A Massive Stroke. He Died With His Tie On. Do You Think That Could Be Our Generation's Equivalent Of That Old Saying About Dying With Your Boots On?

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

You Said 'god Is Cruel' The Way A Person Who's Lived His Whole Life On Tahiti Might Say 'snow Is Cold'. You Knew, But You Didn't Understand." He Stepped Close To David And Put His Palms On The Boy's Cold Cheeks. "do You Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?

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.

When I Was A Kid I Believed Everything I Was Told, Everything I Read, And Every Dispatch Sent Out By My Own Overheated Imagination. This Made For More Than A Few Sleepless Nights, But It Also Filled The World I Lived In With Colors And Textures I Would Not Have Traded For A Lifetime Of Restful Nights.

But Now The Joy Is Gone And The Sadness Is Back, The Sadness Feels Like Something Deserved, The Price Of Some Not-quite-forgotten Betrayal.

You'll Consider What You Did Wrong & Bookend Your Reflections With Hunger - No Supper, No Breakfast.

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

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.

People Think First Love Is Sweet, And Never Sweeter Than When That First Bond Snaps. You've Heard A Thousand Pop And Country Songs That Prove The Point; Some Fool Got His Heart Broke. Yet That First Broken Heart Is Always The Most Painful, The Slowest To Mend, And Leaves The Most Visible Scar. What's So Sweet About That?

As Infants, Our First Victory Comes In Grasping Some Bit Of The World, Usually Our Mother's Fingers. Later We Discover That The World, And The Things Of The World, Are Grasping Us, And Have Been All Along.

Write What You Like, Then Imbue It With Life And Make It Unique By Blending In Your Own Personal Knowledge Of Life, Friendship, Relationships, Sex, And Work. Especially Work. People Love To Read About Work. God Knows Why, But They Do.

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.

He Was A Clot Looking For A Place To Happen, A Splinter Of Bone Hunting A Soft Organ To Puncture, A Lonely Lunatic Cell Looking For A Mate - They Would Set Up Housekeeping And Raise Themselves A Cozy Little Malignant Tumor.

One Can Often Trace The Sources Of A Brand Personality - Here It Is The Advertising, There The Pack, Somewhere Else Some Physical Element Of The Product. Of Course, The Personality Is Clearest And Strongest When All The Elements Are Consistent.

The Writer Must Have A Good Imagination To Begin With, But The Imagination Has To Be Muscular, Which Means It Must Be Exercised In A Disciplined Way, Day In And Day Out, By Writing, Failing, Succeeding And Revising.

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

Multiple Choice

We All Have A Tendency To Want Order In Our Lives. But Order Presupposes Authority, And Authority Presupposes, Sooner Or Later, That We'll All Need Hooves. It's Going To Happen Sooner Or Later, Isn't It? You Know It Is.

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.

I Am Religious In The Sense That I Believe In God And I Believe That There Is An Abiding Logical Spirit That Controls What Goes On To A Certain Extent.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

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.

There Was A Lot They Didn’t Tell You About Death, She Had Discovered, And One Of The Biggies Was How Long It Took The Ones You Loved Most To Die In Your Heart.

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.

When Machines Fail, When Technology Fails, When The Conventional Religion Fails, People Have Got To Have Something. Even A Zombin Lurching Through The Night Can Seem Pretty Cheerful Compared To The Existential Comedy/horror Of The Ozone Layer Dissolving Under The Combined Assult Of A Million Flurocarbon Spray Cans Of Deoderant." - The Mist

Friends Don’t Spy; True Friendship Is About Privacy, Too.

True Friendship

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

A Writer's Notebook Is The Best Way In The World To Immortalize Bad Ideas. My Idea About A Good Idea Is One That Sticks Around And Sticks Around And Sticks Around.

Gordie: Do You Think I'm Weird? Chris: Definitely. Gordie: No Man, Seriously. Am I Weird? Chris: Yeah, But So What? Everybody's Weird

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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'm Convinced That Fear Is At The Root, Of All Bad Writing

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

Formula: Second Draft = First Draft Minus 10%.

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

If I Kept Saying It; If I Kept Reaching Out. My Accident Really Taught Me Just One Thing: The Only Way To Go On Is To Go On. To Say 'i Can Do This' Even When You Know You Can't.

We Lie Best When We Lie To Ourselves.

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.

Where You Think I’m Goan?’ ‘well,’ Eddie Said, ‘what Was Behind Door Number One Wasn’t So Hot, And What Was Behind Door Number Two Was Even Worse, So Now, Instead Of Quitting Like Sane People, We’re Going To Go Right On Ahead And Check Out Door Number Three. The Way Things Have Been Going, I Think It’s Likely To Be Something Like Godzilla Or Ghidra The Three-headed Monster, But I’m An Optimist. I’m Still Hoping For The Stainless Steel Cookware.

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

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.

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

Roland Grabbed Jake And Hauled Him To His Feet. “you Came!” Jake Shouted. “you Really Came!” “i Came, Yes. By The Grace Of The Gods And The Courage Of My Friends, I Came.

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.

If You Don't Have Time To Read, You Don't Have The Time (or The Tools) To Write. Simple As That.

He Needs To Be Corrected, If You Don't Mind Me Saying So. He Needs A Good Talking-to, And Perhaps A Bit More. My Own Girls, Sir, Didn't Care For The Overlook At First. One Of Them Actually Stole A Pack Of My Matches And Tried To Burn It Down. I Corrected Them. I Corrected Them Most Harshly. And When My Wife Tried To Stop Me From Doing My Duty, I Corrected Her.

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

And As A Writer, One Of The Things That I've Always Been Interested In Doing Is Actually Invading Your Comfort Space. Because That's What We're Supposed To Do. Get Under Your Skin, And Make You React.

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.

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

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