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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.

-Stephen King

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If You Wrote Something

Stephen King

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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.

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

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I Am In Trouble Here. This Woman Is Not Right.

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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.

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.

Wanting More Is Just A Recipe For Heartache.

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

A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It. You Prime A Pump With Your Own Water, You Work The Handle With Your Own Strength. You Do This Because You Expect To Get Back More Than You Give.

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.

Stories Are Relics, Part Of An Undiscovered Pre-existing World.

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

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

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.

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

Want A Coke?” Abra Asked. “sugar Solves Lots Of Problems, That’s What I Think.

Teaching School Is Like Having Jumper Cables Hooked To Your Brain, Draining All The Juice Out Of You.

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Despair ... Come To It Any Way But Lightly.

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

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It's Alright To Feel Fear, But Sometimes A Very Bad Idea To Show It.

The King Is In His Tower, Eating Bread And Honey. The Breakers In The Basement, Making All The Money.

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Whenever Anything Important Happens In America, They Have To Gold-plate It, Like Baby Shoes. That Way You Can Forget It.

It Was Always A Pleasure To Write. I Can Never Think Of A Time When I Just Hacked Something Out To Fulfil A Contract Or Meet A Deadline. I Might Have Hacked Things Out, But It Was Always Stuff I Loved.

The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

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

He Realized Now That A Lot Of The Problem Had Been His Own Mind, Which Was Usually Moving At A Speed Ten Or Twenty Times That Of His Classmates. They Had Thought Him Strange, Weird, Or Even Suicidal, Depending On The Escapade In Question, But Maybe It Had Been A Simple Case Of Mental Overdrive-if Anything About Being In Constant Mental Overdrive Was Simple. Anyway, It Was The Sort Of Thing You Got Under Control After A While-you Got It Under Control Or You Found Outlets For It.

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

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

Time Apparently Did Nothing But Blunt Grief’s Sharpest Edge So That It Hacked Rather Than Sliced.

Writers Must Be Fair And Remember Even Bad Guys (most Of Them, Anyway) See Themselves As Good—they Are The Heroes Of Their Own Lives. Giving Them A Fair Chance As Characters Can Create Some Interesting Shades Of Gray—and Shades Of Gray Are Also A Part Of Life.

I Love Music, And I Can Play A Little. But Anyone Can See The Difference Between Someone Who's Talented And Someone That's Not.

In These Silences Something May Rise

Everyone Loves Something For Nothing...even If It Costs Everything.

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?

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.

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

There Are Lots Of Would-be Censors Out There, And Although They May Have Different Agendas, They All Want Basically The Same Thing: For You To See The World They See...or To At Least Shut Up About What You Do See That's Different. They Are Agents Of The Status Quo. Not Necessarily Bad Guys, But Dangerous Guys If You Happen To Believe In Intellectual Freedom.

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!

A Product Is Something Made In A Factory; A Brand Is Something That Is Bought By The Customer. A Product Can Be Copied By A Competitor; A Brand Is Unique. A Product Can Be Quickly Outdated; A Successful Brand Is Timeless.

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."

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.

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.

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

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

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

There Came A Time When You Realized That Moving On Was Pointless. That You Took Yourself With You Wherever You Went.

If Life Teaches Anything At All It Teaches That There Are So Many Happy Endings That The Man Who Believes That There Is No God Needs His Rationality Called Into Serious Question.

Both Rowling And Meyer, They’re Speaking Directly To Young People. … The Real Difference Is That Jo Rowling Is A Terrific Writer And Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

We Never Know Which Lives We Influence, Or When, Or Why.

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

Whatever Came To Mind, Whatever Came To Hand, I Would Read.

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.

Nobody Likes A Clown At Midnight

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.

You Discarded Most Of The Lies Along The Way But Held On To The One That Said Life Mattered.

Your Plan And The Stuff That Comes Out Of My Asshole Bear A Suspicious Resemblance To Each Other.

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 Are All Sorts Of Theories And Ideas About What Constitutes A Good Opening Line. It's Tricky Thing, And Tough To Talk About Because I Don't Think Conceptually While I Work On A First Draft -- I Just Write. To Get Scientific About It Is A Little Like Trying To Catch Moonbeams In A Jar. 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.

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

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

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.

Everything That Goes Around Comes Around, They Say, And Although I've Never Been Able To Figure Out Who The Mysteriously Wise Sages Known As "they" Might Be, They're Certainly Right When It Comes To Time-travel.

The Story Is The Only Thing That's Important. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself. It's Like What Bowlers Say. You Hear Writers Talk About Character Or Theme Or Mood Or Mode Or Tense Or Person. But Bowlers Say, If You Make The Spares, The Strikes Will Take Care Of Themselves. If You Can Tell A Story, Everything Else Becomes Possible. But Without Story, Nothing Is Possible, Because Nobody Wants To Hear About Your Sensitive Characters If There's Nothing Happening In The Story. And The Same Is True With Mood. Story Is The Only Thing That's Important.

Ninety-eight Percent Of What Goes On In People's Heads Is None Of Their Smucking Business.

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.

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.

I Love The Movies, And When I Go To See A Movie That's Been Made From One Of My Books, I Know That It Isn't Going To Be Exactly Like My Novel Because A Lot Of Other People Have Interpreted It. But I Also Know It Has An Idea That I'll Like Because That Idea Occurred To Me, And I Spent A Year, Or A Year And A Half Of My Life Working On It.

I Love My Sons And I Love That They Are Writers - I Also Love My Daughter, Who's A Minister And An Orchard Keeper! - But I Wouldn't Wish The Burden Of Mid-world And The Dark Tower On Them. I Enjoy Working With Them, Though, Because We Fit Together.

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

Sooner Or Later Even The Fastest Runners Have To Stand And Fight.

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

Everything Is Sort Of Built In A Way That To Me Suggests Intelligent Design. But At The Same Time, There's A Lot Of Things In Life Where You Say To Yourself, Well, If This Is God's Plan, It's Very Peculiar. And You Have To Wonder About That Guy's Personality, The Big Guy's Personality.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

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

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

The Idea That The Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time. Substance Abusing Writers Are Just Substance Abusers — Common Garden Variety Drunks And Druggies, In Other Words. Any Claims That The Drugs And Alcohol Are Necessary To Dull A Finer Sensibility Are Just The Usual Self-serving Bullshit. I've Heard Alcoholic Snowplow Drivers Make The Same Claim, That They Drink To Still The Demons.

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

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.

Formula: Second Draft = First Draft Minus 10%.

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