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In A Brilliant Fusion Of Fact And Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips Has Written The Novel Of The Year. It's The Story Of A Serial Killer's Crimes And Capture, Yes, But It's Also A Compulsively Readable Story Of How One Brave Woman Faces Up To Acts Of Terrible Violence In Order To Create Something Good And Strong In The Aftermath. Quiet Dell Will Be Compared To In Cold Blood, But Phillips Offers Something Capote Could Not: A Heroine Who Lights Up The Dark Places And Gives Us Hope In Our Humanity.

-Stephen King

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In A Brilliant Fusion

Stephen King

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In A Brilliant Fusion Of Fact And Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips Has Written The Novel Of The Year. It's The Story Of A Serial Killer's Crimes And Capture, Yes, But It's Also A Compulsively Readable Story Of How One Brave Woman Faces Up To Acts Of Terrible Violence In Order To Create Something Good And Strong In The Aftermath. Quiet Dell Will Be Compared To In Cold Blood, But Phillips Offers Something Capote Could Not: A Heroine Who Lights Up The Dark Places And Gives Us Hope In Our Humanity.

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Now Panic Beats And Flutters Inside My Skull Like A Flock Of Starlings Locked In An Attic.

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.

A Good Reputation Is Something That Must Be Earned, Yet Can Never Be Bought.

Good Reputation

I Write In The Mornings, In The Bright Daylight. But I Get Most Of My Good Ideas After The Sun Has Gone Down And The Dark Is On The Land.

I Don't Want To Go To The Heaven That I Learned About When I Was A Kid. To Me, It Seems Boring.

Best Not To Look Back. Best To Believe There Will Be Happily Ever Afters All The Way Around - And So There May Be; Who Is To Say There Will Not Be Such Endings? Not All Boats Which Sail Away Into Darkness Never Find The Sun Again, Or The Hand Of Another Child; If Life Teaches Anything At All, It Teachers That There Are So Many Happy Endings That The Man Who Believes There Is No God Needs His Rationality Called Into Serious Question.

It Might Be That The Biggest Division In The World Isn't Men And Women But Folks Who Like Cats And Folks Who Like Dogs" - (l.t.'s Theory Of Pets)

A Dimwit Thinks Nothing Is Funny Unless It's Mean.

She Can't Help It,' He Said. 'she's Got The Soul Of A Poet And The Emotional Makeup Of A Junkyard Dog.

If There's One American Belief I Hold Above All Others, It's That Those Who Would Set Themselves Up In Judgment On Matters Of What Is "right" And What Is "best" Should Be Given No Rest; That They Should Have To Defend Their Behavior Most Stringently. ... As A Nation, We've Been Through Too Many Fights To Preserve Our Rights Of Free Thought To Let Them Go Just Because Some Prude With A Highlighter Doesn't Approve Of Them

A Library Is A Place Where You Can Live A Thousand Lives. So Why Are You Waiting When You Could Be Living? Visit Your Library Today.

One Only Wishes Wayne Lapierre And His Nra Board Of Directors Could Be Drafted To Some Of These Scenes, Where They Would Be Required To Put On Booties And Rubber Gloves And Help Clean Up The Blood, The Brains, And The Chunks Of Intestine Still Containing The Poor Wads Of Half-digested Food That Were Some Innocent Bystander's Last Meal.

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

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

Because Things Like This You Can Only Ssay Once. And You Either Get It Wrong Or Right, It's The End Either Way, Because It's Too Hard To Ever Try To Say Again.

I Don't Like The Idea That I Am Going To Come Back As An Ant Or A Sparrow If I Don't Get Along In The Great Karma Of Life.

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

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

True Friendship

I Think A Lot Of Times Dreams Are Nothing More Than A Kind Of Mental Or Spiritual Flatulence. They're A Way Of Relieving Pressure.

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.

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.

It's Best To Have Your Tools With You. If You Don't, You're Apt To Find Something You Didn't Expect And Get Discouraged.

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

Trust, A Sense Of Humor, And Don't Let The Sun Go Down On An Argument Without Trying To Make It Up. That's All I Know About Good Marriage. I've Been Married A Long Time - It Seems To Be Working.

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

We Lie Best When We Lie To Ourselves.

Terrible Thing To Live In Fear. Brooks Hatlen Knew It. Knew It All Too Well. All I Want Is To Be Back Where Things Make Sense. Where I Won't Have To Be Afraid All The Time.

The Thought Process Can Never Be Complete Without Articulation.

Pride Was The Belt You Used To Hold Your Pants Up When You Had No Pants.

I Can See Your Dirtypillows.

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

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

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.

There's Something In Us That Is Very Much Attracted To Madness. Everyone Who Looks Off The Edge Of A Tall Building Has Felt At Least A Faint, Morbid Urge To Jump. And Anyone Who Has Ever Put A Loaded Pistol Up To His Head... All Right, My Point Is This: Even The Most Well-adjusted Person Is Holding Onto His Or Her Sanity By A Greased Rope. I Really Believe That. The Rationality Circuits Are Shoddily Built Into The Human Animal.

In Many Cases When A Reader Puts A Story Aside Because It 'got Boring,' The Boredom Arose Because The Writer Grew Enchanted With His Powers Of Description And Lost Sight Of His Priority, Which Is To Keep The Ball Rolling.

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

A Friend Came To Visit James Joyce One Day And Found The Great Man Sprawled Across His Writing Desk In A Posture Of Utter Despair. James, What’s Wrong?' The Friend Asked. 'is It The Work?' Joyce Indicated Assent Without Even Raising His Head To Look At His Friend. Of Course It Was The Work; Isn’t It Always? How Many Words Did You Get Today?' The Friend Pursued. Joyce (still In Despair, Still Sprawled Facedown On His Desk): 'seven.' Seven? But James… That’s Good, At Least For You.' Yes,' Joyce Said, Finally Looking Up. 'i Suppose It Is… But I Don’t Know What Order They Go In!

Reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life. I Take A Book With Me Everywhere I Go, And Find There Are All Sorts Of Opportunities To Dip In. The Trick Is To Teach Yourself To Read In Small Sips As Well As In Long Swallows. Waiting Rooms Were Made For Books— Of Course! But So Are Theater Lobbies Before The Show, Long And Boring Checkout Lines, And Everyone’s Favorite, The John. You Can Even Read While You’re Driving, Thanks To The Audiobook Revolution. Of The Books I Read Each Year, Anywhere From Six To A Dozen Are On Tape.

I Have Spent A Good Many Years Since―too Many, I Think―being Ashamed About What I Write. I Think I Was Forty Before I Realized That Almost Every Writer Of Fiction Or Poetry Who Has Ever Published A Line Has Been Accused By Someone Of Wasting His Or Her God-given Talent. If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

Some Part Of Me Knew From The First That What I Wanted Was Not Reality But Myth.

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I Believe That Anyone Using The Phrase 'that's So Cool' Should Have To Stand In The Corner.

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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.

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

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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The Things A Man Sees When He Ain't Got A Gun.--watson The Caretaker

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

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?

I'm Not The First Person To Have Said This - No Writer Ever Feels That The Execution Of A Book Lives Up To The Idea For That Book. The Execution Always Falls Short.

God Pisses Down The Back Of Your Neck Every Day But Only Drowns You Once.

Dark Tower Series

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

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

Pray For Rain All You Like, But Dig A Well As You Do It.

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

It's Not The Pain I'm Afraid Of; I Know About The Pain. What I'm Afraid Of Is The End Of This Small, Sweet Dream.

Let’s Talk, You And I. Let’s Talk About Fear. The House Is Empty As I Write This; A Cold February Rain Is Falling Outside. It’s Night. Sometimes When The Wind Blows The Way It’s Blowing Now, We Lose The Power. But For Now It’s On, And So Let’s Talk Very Honestly About Fear. Let’s Talk Very Rationally About Moving To The Rim Of Madnessand... And Perhaps Over The Edge.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

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.

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

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

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

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.

"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."

The Only [working] Ritual Is Making Tea. I Use The Loose Leaves And Drink It By The Gallon.

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.

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

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 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.

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

The Man In Black Smiled. "shall We Tell The Truth Then, You And I? No More Lies?" I Thought We Had Been." But The Man In Black Persisted As If Roland Hadn't Spoken. "shall There Be Truth Between Us, As Two Men? Not As Friends, But As Equals? There Is An Offer You Will Get Rarely, Roland. Only Equals Speak The Truth, That's My Thought On't. Friends And Lovers Lie Endlessly, Caught In The Web Of Regard. How Tiresome!

Talent Is Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work.

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

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

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

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.

Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie.

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

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.

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.

Want To Know The Best Thing About Teaching? Seeing That Moment When A Kid Discovers His Or Her Gift. There's No Feeling On Earth Like It.

I Like To Think That Good People Win. But Even Good People Have Other Sides. Most People Will Slow Down To Get A Good Look At An Accident, Even Though They Won't Admit It.

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.

We Each Owe A Death, There Are No Exceptions, I Know That, But Sometimes, Oh God, The Green Mile Is So Long.

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

I'm Most Afraid Of Losing My Mind. You Lose Your Identity, Your Sense Of Who You Are, Where You Are.

I Know Your Mother Lives In Your Head - Almost Everyone's Mother Does, I Guess - But You Can't Let Her Have Her Way On This One

Time Slowed And Reality Bent; On And On The Eggman Went.

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

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.

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

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

The Wind Makes You Ache Is Some Place That Is Deeper Than Your Bones. It May Be That It Touches Something Old In The Human Soul, A Chord Of Race Memory That Says Migrate Or Die - Migrate Or Die.

Even When Love Isn't Enough...somehow It Is.

For A Moment He Felt A Wild Hope: Perhaps This Really Was A Nightmare. Perhaps He Would Awake In His Own Bed, Bathed In Sweat, Shaking, Maybe Even Crying . . . But Alive. Safe. Then He Pushed The Thought Away. Its Charm Was Deadly, Its Comfort Fatal.

I Believe These Stories Exist Because We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives: The Parent Who Punches Instead Of Kissing, The Auto Accident That Takes A Loved One, The Cancer We One Day Discover Living In Our Own Bodies. If Such Terrible Occurrences Were Acts Of Darkness, They Might Actually Be Easier To Cope With. But Instead Of Being Dark, They Have Their Own Terrible Brilliance. . . And None Shine So Bright As The Acts Of Cruelty We Sometimes Perpetrate In Our Own Families.

Paul Lepage Has Become A Terrible Embarrassment To The State I Live In And Love. If He Won't Govern, He Should Resign.

All You Imagined, No Matter How Wild It Might Seem, Was No More Than A Disguised Version Of What You Already Knew.

To The Devil With False Modesty.

But See That You Get On. That's Your Job In This Hard World, To Keep Your Love Alive And See That You Get On, No Matter What. Pull Your Act Together And Just Go On.

In The End, The Wind Takes Everything, Doesn't It? And Why Not? Why Other? If The Sweetness Of Our Lives Did Not Depart, There Would Be No Sweetness At All.

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

After The 9/11 Apocalypse Happened In New York City, People, Particularly New Yorkers, Who Breathed In The Ash, Or Saw The Results Of That, Have A Tendency To Keep Seeing Echoes And Having Flashbacks To It.

Any Parting Could Be Forever, And We Don't Know.

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.

Good Books Are For Consideration After, Too.

You Couldn't Not Like Someone Who Liked The Guitar.

Kids Absolutely Not Reading. I Think It's Because They're So Screen-oriented [tvs, Computers, Smartphones]. They Do Read - Girls In Particular Read A Lot. They Have A Tendency To Go Toward The Paranormal, Romances, Twilight And Stuff Like That. And Then It Starts To Taper Off Because Other Things Take Precedence, Like The Kardashian Sisters.

She Knew With Suddeness And Ease That This Moment Would Be With Her Always, Within Hand's Reach Of Memory. She Doubted If They All Sensed It - They Had Seen The World - But Even George Was Silent For A Minute As They Looked, And The Scene, The Smell, Even The Sound Of The Band Playing A Faintly Recognisable Movie Theme, Was Locked Forever In Her, And She Was At Peace.

C-c-can You Get Bones In Your Buh-buh-brain?' Bill Asked. This Was Turning Into The Most Interesting Conversation He'd Had In Weeks.

Interesting Conversation

Sometimes Loving Eyes Don't See What They Don't Want To See.

Writers Write. That's All It Is. It Is As Simple, And As Complex, As That.

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.

Flip-flop, Hippety-hop, Offa Your Rocker And Over The Top, Life's A Fiction And The World's A Lie, So Put On Some Creedence And Let's Get High.

He Was One Of Those Quite Rare Adults Who Communicate With Small Children Fairly Well And Who Love Them All Impartially--not In A Sugary Way But In A Businesslike Fashion That May Sometimes Entail A Hug, In The Same Way That Closing A Big Business Deal May Call For A Handshake.

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.

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

...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.

Hearts Are Tough, Most Times They Don't Break. Most Times They Are Only Bend

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

Successful Rebellions Always Begin In Secret.

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.

Anyway, As The Old Barrelhouse Song Says, My God, How The Money Rolled In. Norton Must Have Subscribed To The Old Puritan Notion That The Best Way To Figure Out Which Folks God Favours Is By Checking Their Bank Acounts.

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

In A Brilliant Fusion Of Fact And Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips Has Written The Novel Of The Year. It's The Story Of A Serial Killer's Crimes And Capture, Yes, But It's Also A Compulsively Readable Story Of How One Brave Woman Faces Up To Acts Of Terrible Violence In Order To Create Something Good And Strong In The Aftermath. Quiet Dell Will Be Compared To In Cold Blood, But Phillips Offers Something Capote Could Not: A Heroine Who Lights Up The Dark Places And Gives Us Hope In Our Humanity.

There's Nothing As Human As Hunger. There's No Creation Without Talent, I Give You That, But Talent Is Cheap. Talent Goes Begging. Hunger Is The Piston Of Art.

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

You Know How It's Going To End, But Instead Of Spoiling Things, That Somehow Increases Your Fascination. It's Like Watching A Kid Run His Electric Train Faster And Faster And Waiting For It To Derail On One Of The Curves.

Writing Isn't About Making Money, Getting Famous, Getting Dates, Getting Laid, Or Making Friends. In The End, It's About Enriching The Lives Of Those Who Will Read Your Work, And Enriching Your Own Life, As Well. It's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

I'll See You.' He Grinned. 'not If I See You First.

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.

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

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.

Oh, There Were All Sorts Of Things To Wonder About, But The Truth Was Simple: Here Stood This Door Alone On An Endless Stretch Of Beach, And It Was For Only One Of Two Things: Opening Or Leaving Closed.

Never's The Word God Listens For When He Needs A Laugh.

Life Turns On A Dime.

I Write To Find Out What I Think.

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Glory Of A Good Tale Is That It Is Limitless And Fluid; A Good Tale Belongs To Each Reader In Its Own Particular Way.

People Seem To Think There's A Magic Formula To Writing, I Just Write 1 Word At A Time.

I Can't See The Future, But It's Grim. The Depletion Of Resources - We're Living In This Dine-and-dash Economy.

Nightmares Exist Outside Of Logic, And There's Little Fun To Be Had In Explanations; They're Antithetical To The Poetry Of Fear.

If You Were A Real Fascistic Society And You Had A Vocal Minority That Was Shouting, "stop This, Stop That, Stop The Other Thing," What You Would Say Is, "let's Give Them All The Drugs They Want." In A Lot Of States, Something Very Much Like That Happened. They Lowered The Drinking Age To Eighteen And Said, "get Juiced."

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

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

I Changed It. I Had To. Do You Know Why?" She Studied Him, Her Eyes Grave. "because That Was Then And This Is Now. Because The Past Is Gone, Even Though It Defines The Present.

You Are The Grim, Goal-oriented Ones Who Will Not Believe That The Joy Is In The Journey Rather Than The Destination No Matter How Many Times It Has Been Proven To You.

The Greatest Mystery The Universe Offers Is Not Life But Size.

For," I Said, "a Murdered Man Or Woman Dies Not In God's Time, But In Man's. He... Or She... Is Cut Short Before He... Or She... Can Atone For Sin, And So All Errors Must Be Forgiven. When You Think Of It That Way, All Murderers Are A Gateway For Heaven.

Our Time Here Is Brief, Our Risk Enormous. Don't Waste The One Or Increase The Other, If You Please.

Human Nature Baby, Grab It And Growl.

It Wasn't Just Love That Held People Together. There Was Secrets, And The Price You Paid To Keep Them.

Schizoid Behavior Is A Pretty Common Thing In Children. It's Accepted, Because All We Adults Have This Unspoken Agreement That Children Are Lunatics.

Few If Any Seemed To Have Grasped The Principle Of Reality; New Knowledge Leads Always To Yet More Awesome Mysteries. Greater Physiological Knowledge Of The Brain Makes The Existence Of The Soul Less Possible Yet More Probable By The Nature Of The Search.

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

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

Superstition, Like True Love, Needs Time To Grow And Reflect Upon Itself.

What A Paragon Of Virtue You Are, Gunslinger!" The Man In Black Laughed.

A Place Is Yours When You Know Where All The Roads Go.

What I Tell Kids Is Don't Get Mad (about Censorship) Get Even. Run, Don't Walk, To The First Library You Can Find, And Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Eyes. Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Brains. Because That's Exactly What You Need To Know.

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.

So What He Supposed To Do? Grab Bobbie's Ax And Make Like Jack Nicholson In The Shinning? He Could See It. Smash, Crash, Bash: Heeeeeeere's Gardener!

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

Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

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.

Women's Lib, Frannie Had Decided, Was Nothing More Nor Less Than An Outgrowth Of The Technological Society. Women Were At The Mercy Of Their Bodies. They Were Smaller. They Tended To Be Weaker. A Man Couldn't Get With Child, But A Woman Could---every Four-year-old Knows It. And A Pregnant Woman Is A Vulnerable Human Being. Civilization Had Provided An Umbrella Of Sanity That Both Sexes Could Stand Beneath.

You Can Go Through Your Whole Life Telling Yourself That Life Is Logical, Life Is Prosaic, Life Is Sane. Above All Sane. And I Think It Is. I've Had A Lot Of Time To Think About That. And What I Keep Coming Back To Is [her] Dying Declaration: 'so You Understand That When We Increase The Number Of Variables, The Axioms Themselves Never Change.'

The Idea That Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time.

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 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.

If God Rewards Us On Earth For Good Deeds—the Old Testament Suggests It’s So, And The Puritans Certainly Believed It—then Maybe Satan Rewards Us For Evil Ones.

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

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

There Was A Beautiful Feeling Of Calm In My Groin, A Sense Of Peace So Remarkable It Was Almost Ecstasy——anyone Who' Suffered Bad Pain And Then Recovered Will Know What I'm Talking About.

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.

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 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.

Kindle, Isn’t It?” The Waitress Asked. “i Got One For Christmas, And I Love It. I’m Reading My Way Through All Of Jodi Picoult’s Books.” “oh, Probably Not All Of Them,” Wesley Said. “huh? Why Not?” “she’s Probably Got Another One Done Already. That’s All I Meant.” “and James Patterson’s Probably Written One Since He Got Up This Morning!” She Said, And Went Off Chortling.

Writing Is Seduction.

Each Life Makes Its Own Immitation Of Immortality.

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Gabriela Mistral

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