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It's Like Many Other Things In Life, Ellie. You Keep On The Path And All's Well. You Get Off It And The Next Thing You Know You're Lost If You're Not Lucky.

-Stephen King

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It's Like Many Other

Stephen King

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It's Like Many Other Things In Life, Ellie. You Keep On The Path And All's Well. You Get Off It And The Next Thing You Know You're Lost If You're Not Lucky.

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Come To A Book As You Would Come To An Unexplored Land. Come Without A Map. Explore It, And Draw Your Own Map.... A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It.

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?

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The Book Is Not The Important Part. The Book Is The Delivery System. The Important Part Is The Story And The Talent.

It's Like Many Other Things In Life, Ellie. You Keep On The Path And All's Well. You Get Off It And The Next Thing You Know You're Lost If You're Not Lucky.

She Felt Like Someone Who Drowns Remembering What It Was Like To Still Be On The Boat, So Calm And At Ease, So Carelessly Safe

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

He Thrusts His Fists Against The Posts And Still Insists He Sees The Ghosts.

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.

Life's Simplest Answers Are Often The Easiest To Overlook.

The Idea For A Novel Is Like A Little Tiny Fire In A Dark Night. And, One By One, The Characters Come And Stand Around It And Warm Their Hands.

Go Then, There Are Other Worlds Than These.

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

Sooner Or Later

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 Started Writing Seriously When I Was About 12. I Am Always In The Mood.

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

He Had Been (thinking? Praying?) It Was All The Same Thing.

When You Start, It's Very Cold, An Impossible Task. But Then Maybe The Characters Start To Take On A Little Bit Of Life, Or The Story Takes A Turn That You Don't Expect ... With Me That Happens A Lot Because I Don't Outline, I Just Have A Vague Notion. So It's Always Felt Like Less Of A Made Thing And More Of A Found Thing. That's Exciting. That's A Thrill.

No, It's Not A Very Good Story - Its Author Was Too Busy Listening To Other Voices To Listen As Closely As He Should Have To The One Coming From Inside.

Listening To Others

A Short Story Is Like A Kiss In The Dark.

There Is The Watchmaker Theory That God Wound Up The Universe And Let It Tick. That May Be. Or It May Be That He Takes A Hand In Things From Time To Time. But Whatever It Is, I Am Sure That There Is Something Out There.

What Happens To The Wide-eyed Observer When The Window Between Reality And Unreality Breaks And The Glass Begins To Fly?

When You're Five And You Hurt, You Make A Big Noise In The World. At Ten You Whimper. But By The Time You Make Fifteen You Begin To Eat The Poisoned Apples That Grow On Your Own Inner Tree Of Pain.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

Marriage Is Referred To In The Bible As “mystical Union,” And It Really Is In The Sense That Two People Who Don’t Know Each Other Get Together. I’m Always Interested In How Much You Find Out About The Other Person And How Much You Don’t Find Out.

I'm Seen As Somebody Who Writes For Adults Because I'm An Older Man Myself. Some Of Them Find Me, And A Lot Of Them Don't.

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

If You Don’t Have The Time To Do Something Right, Where Are You Going To Find The Time To Fix It?

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

Friends. They Aren’t Any Such Thing As Good Friend Or Bad Friend. Maybe There Are Just Friend. People Who Stand By You When You're Hurt And Who Helped You Feel Not So Lonely. Maybe There Are Worth Being Scared For And Hoping For And Living For. Maybe Worth Dying For Too. If That What Has To Be. No Bad Friends. Only People You Want. Need To Be With. People Who Build Their Houses In Your Heart.

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

The Low Bird Is Not Picked Tenderly Out Of The Dust By Its Fellows; Rather, It Is Dispatched Quickly And Without Mercy.

" Science Is Beginning To Encroach On Every Level Of Our Volition". And To Me, That Is A Frightening Social Concept. It Doesn't Have Anything To Do With The Right To Have An Abortion Verses The Right To Life. It Has To Do With The Ability Of Science To Keep Things Alive And The Ability Of Science To Really Control Our Lives.

I Believe That The Combination Of Pencil And Memory Creates A Kind Of Practical Magic, And Magic Is Dangerous.

If You Were Seeing A Lot Of Horseshit, There Had To Be A Pony In The Vicinity.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

It Was Really Amazing The Number Of Hard Hits From Which A Mind Could Recover.

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.

This Is A Dreadful Thing To Say, But I Have Wondered In My Darker Hours That, If Everything Were Legal, Wouldn't It Be Kind Of A Darwinian Solution To A Lot Of Problems? Who Are The Bikies That You See Who Are Cruisin' Around With No Helmet Or With A Hat Turned Around Like That Yoyo In Cheap Trick? They're Dummies, And If They Splatter Their Brains All Over The Sidewalk, They're Not Going To Be Collecting Food Stamps.

As With All Other Aspects Of Fiction, The Key To Writing Good Dialogue Is Honesty.

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

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.

Hairstyles Change, And Skirt Lengths, And Slang, But High School Administrations? Never.

The Old Sleep Poorly. Perhaps They Stand Watch.

The Tower. He Would Come To The Dark Tower And There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing Their Names; There He Would Sing All Their Names. The Sun Stained The East A Dusky Rose, And At Last Roland, No Longer The Last Gunslinger But One Of The Last Three, Slept And Dreamed His Angry Dreams Through Which There Ran Only That One Soothing Blue Thread: There I Will Sing All Their Names!

By The Time I Was Fourteen The Nail In My Wall Would No Longer Support The Weight Of The Rejection Slips Impaled Upon It. I Replaced The Nail With A Spike And Went On Writing.

Don’t Go Beyond, No Matter How Much You Feel You Need To, Doctor. The Barrier Was Not Made To Be Broken. Remember This: There Is More Power Here Than You Know. It Is Old And Always Restless. Remember.

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).

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

Anyone Who Thinks Impressions Of Old Movie Actors Is Funny Absolutely Cannot Be Trusted. I Think It's Like A Law Of Nature.

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.

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

You Know, Small Children Take It As A Matter Of Course That Things Will Change Every Day And Grown-ups Understand That Things Change Sooner Or Later And Their Job Is To Keep Them From Changing As Long As Possible. It’s Only Kids In High School Who Are Convinced They’re Never Going To Change. There’s Always Going To Be A Pep Rally And There’s Always Going To Be A Spectator Bus, Somewhere Out There In Their Future.

I Stood For Almost An Hour In A Line Of Shuffling, Bitter - Eyed Late Mailers (christmas Is Such A Carefree, Low - Pressure Time - That's One Of The Things I Love About It).

Alone. Yes, That's The Key Word, The Most Awful Word In The English Tongue. Murder Doesn't Hold A Candle To It And Hell Is Only A Poor Synonym.

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

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.

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.

Research Can Only Present Data About The Past. No One Seriously Believes That People's Answers To Hypothetical Questions About The Future Accurately Represent Their Future Behaviour; They Merely Represent A Current Attitude, Which May Or May Not Be Translated Into Future Behaviour.

The First Draft Of A Book—even A Long One—should Take No More Than Three Months, The Length Of A Season.

When It Comes To Horror There's A Strange Need To Analyze. When "evil Children" Fad Happened, There Was The Exorcist And The Other And The Omen. People Would Say, "what This Really Means Is That Americans Don't Want To Have Kids Anymore. They Feel Hostility Towards Their Own Children. They Feel They're Being Tied Down And Dragged Down." In Fact, In Most Cases, What Those Books Are About Is Nice Children Who Are Beset By Forces Beyond Their Control.

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

I Can Remember Being Home From School With Tonsillitis And Writing Stories In Bed To Pass The Time.

Guys, Gals, Now Hear This: No One Wants To Take Away Your Hunting Rifles. No One Wants To Take Away Your Shotguns. No One Wants To Take Away Your Revolvers, And No One Wants To Take Away Your Automatic Pistols, As Long As Said Pistols Hold No More Than Ten Rounds. If You Can't Kill A Home Invader (or Your Wife, Up In The Middle Of The Night To Get A Snack From The Fridge) With Ten Shots, You Need To Go Back To The Local Shooting Range.

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.

If God Gives You Something You Can Do, Why In God's Name Wouldn't You Do It?

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?

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

Fantasy And Reality

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

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

Being A Teenager

He Found Himself Still With Too Many Questions And Not Enough Answers.

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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.

The Thought Process Can Never Be Complete Without Articulation.

A Lot Of Fairy Tales Are Thinly Disguised Hostility Raps Against Parents. Kids Know That They Can't Make It On Their Own, That If They Were Left Alone, They Would Die.

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

Was It Pretty? Your Country. . .your Land?" "it Was Beautiful," The Gunslinger Said. "there Were Fields And Forests And Rivers And Mists In The Morning. But That's Only Pretty. My Mother Used To Say That The Only Real Beauty Is Order And Love And Light.

I Don't Make Movies. I Don't Feel That I Have To Have Artistic Control. Part Of This Comes From The Fact That The Book Lives On No Matter What Hollywood Does To Your Novel In Terms Of A Film. Now, You Try To Be Careful Who You Allow To Do Your Film Because Nobody Wants Their Novel To Become A Turkey Movie. But, On The Other Hand, It Is A Crapshot Anyway, Because Even The Best People Can Make A Bad Film.

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.

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

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.

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

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

That's Something That Is Almost Accidental At The Beginning Of A Career, But The More You Write, The More Trained You Are To Recognize The Little Signals.

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.

Working On A New Idea Is Kind Of Like Getting Married. Then A New Idea Comes Along And You Think, 'man, I'd Really Like To Go Out With Her.' But You Can't. At Least Not Until The Old Idea Is Finished.

You Have To Go Where The Book Leads You.

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.

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.

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.

Of Course When You Were Running With The Bottom Dogs, What You Mostly Saw Were Paws, Claws, And Assholes.

It's Actually Against My Religion To Laugh At Men Who Are Toting Guns.

I've Always Thought It Would Be Fun To Update "hansel And Gretel." I'd Have These White Parents In The Suburbs With An Income Of Fifty Or Sixty Thousand Dollars. Daddy Loses His Job, And The Wicked Stepmother Says, "we Could Get Along, We Could Keep Our Mastercharge, If You'd Just Get Rid Of Those Shitty Kids." Finally The Father Hires A Limo And Tells The Driver, "drop 'em Off On Lenox Avenue In Harlem At Two In The Morning." These Two Little White Kids Land There. They're Menaced. And This Supposedly Nice Black Lady Says, "would You Like Some Candy?"

Let The Word And The Legend Go Before You. Let The World Go Before You. Let Your Shadow Grow. Let It Grow Hair On Its Face. Let It Become Dark. Given Time, Words May Even Enchant An Enchanter.

The Redness Was Going Out Of The Light Now, The Remains Of The Day Were A Fading Pink, The Color Of Wild Roses.

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

We Are Going To Fight. We Are Going To Be Hurt. And In The End, We Will Stand.

I Want To Engage The Reader. I'm An Emotional Writer, In The Sense That I Would Be Happy If You Re-read A Book For The Intellectual Or The Mental Part Of It, But, The First Time, I Just Like To Reach Out And Grab You, Pull You In.

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

New Experiences

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.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

Bad Writing Is More Than A Matter Of (expletive Deleted) Syntax And Faulty Observation; Bad Writing Usually Arises From A Stubborn Refusal To Tell Stories About What People Actually Do To Face The Fact, Let Us Say, That Murderers Sometimes Help Old Ladies Cross The Street.

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

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

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.

Everything In Moderation. And That Includes A Couple Of Beers A Day.

Life Was A Wheel, Its Only Job Was To Turn, And It Always Came Back To Where It Started.

The Cumulative Power Of Doing Things The Same Way Every Day Seems To Be A Way Of Saying To The Mind: You're Going To Be Dreaming Soon.

I Would Say Plotting Is The Most Difficult Thing For Me. Characterization Is Only Hard Because Sometimes I Feel I Get So Interested In It That I Want To Talk Too Much About The Characters And That Slows The Story Down. So I Say, "hey, People Want To Find Out What's Going To Happen Next, They Don't Want To Listen To You Spout Off About This Or That Person." But I Think Even The Bad Guy Deserves To Tell His Side Of The Story.

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.

I Still Think That Of All The People Doing Top Fiction Today, John D. Macdonald Is The Best.he Was My Model As A Kid. If There Are People Out There That Want To Write, All You Need To Do Is Read 20 Of His Stories To Get An Idea What It Takes To Make A Story Kick Over.

Any Thoughts Of Guilt, Any Feelings Of Regret, Had Faded. The Desert Had Baked Them Out.

There Were No Horror Movies Or Horror Books To Speak Of In The '40s. I Picked The '50s Because That Pretty Well Spans My Life As An Appreciator - As Somebody Who's Been Involved With This Mass Cult Of Horror, From Radio And Movies And Saturday Matinees And Books. In The '40s There Really Wasn't That Much. People Don't Want To Read About Horrible Things In Horrible Times. So, In The '40s, There Was Val Lutin With The Cat People And The Curse Of The Cat People And There Wasn't Much Else.

Deep Inside Her (ih Her Harrowed Soul) She Felt A Glowing Ember Of Fury At The Man Responsible For This. Tha Man Who Had Put Her In This Position. She Looked At The Pistol Lying Beside The Basin, And Knew That If He Were Here, She Would Use It On Him Without A Moment's Hesitation. Knowing That Made Her Feel Confused About Herself. It Also Made Her Feel A Little Stronger.

Human Nature Baby, Grab It And Growl.

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

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

Yes, I’ve Made A Great Deal Of Dough From My Fiction, But I Never Set A Single Word Down On Paper With The Thought Of Being Paid For It...i Have Written Because It Fulfilled Me. ... I Did It For The Pure Joy Of The Things. And If You Can Do It For Joy, You Can Do It Forever.

Loving What You Do

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

Human Beings Have Got A Lot Of Good, Noble Impulses Inside Them, And Most People Want To Be Good And Do More Good Than They Do Evil. Hell, We've Had Nuclear Weapons Now For Thirty Or Thirty-five Years And Nothing's Happened Yet. That In Itself Seems To Be A Miracle. If Reagan Pushes The Button Or Somebody Pushes The Button In Russia Or Somebody Pushes It In Costa Rica, They Can Put A Big Tombstone In Outer Space That Says, "we Gave It A Good Try." Because We Have.

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

How Much Courage Does It Take To Fire Up Your Tractor And Plow Under A Crop You Spent Six Or Seven Years Growing? How Much Courage To Go On And Do That After You've Spent All That Time Finding Out How To Prepare The Soil And When To Plant And How Much To Water And When To Reap? How Much To Just Say, "i Have To Quit These Peas. Peas Are No Good For Me, I Better Try Corn Or Beans.

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.

I Can Remember As A College Student Writing Stories And Novels, Some Of Which Ended Up Getting Published And Some That Didn't. It Was Like My Head Was Going To Burst - There Were So Many Things I Wanted To Write All At Once. I Had So Many Ideas, Jammed Up. It Was Like They Just Needed Permission To Come Out.

It Didn´t Occur To Me Until Later That There´s Another Truth, Very Simple: Greed In A Good Cause Is Still Greed.

Do You Believe In An Afterlife?" The Gunslinger Asked Him As Brown Dropped Three Ears Of Hot Corn Onto His Plate. Brown Nodded. "i Think This Is It.

When A Man Has Died, He Wants You To Know About It.

Do You Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?...sometimes He Makes Us Live.

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.

He Sat Upon His Throne, Which Is Made Of Skulls.

Only God Gets Things Right The First Time.

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

God Wiped Snot Out Of His Nose And That Was You.

It's As If God Gave You Something-all Those Stories- And Said, "here You Are. Try Not To Lose It." But Children Lose Everything Unless Somebody Is There To Help Them, And If Your Parents Are Too Stupid To Do It, Maybe I Ought To.

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.

I Like To Get Ten Pages A Day, Which Amounts To 2,000 Words. That’s 180,000 Words Over A Three-month Span, A Goodish Length For A Book — Something In Which The Reader Can Get Happily Lost, If The Tale Is Done Well And Stays Fresh.

God Turned Out To Be A Bunch Of Bad Little Kids Playing Interstellar Xbox. Isn't That Funny?

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

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

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

I Love Crime, I Love Mysteries, And I Love Ghosts.

It Would Perhaps Not Be Amiss To Point Out That He Had Always Tried To Be A Good Dog. He Had Tried To Do All The Things His Man And His Woman, And Most Of All His Boy, Had Asked Or Expected Of Him. He Would Have Died For Them, If That Had Been Required. He Had Never Wanted To Kill Anybody. He Had Been Struck By Something, Possibly Destiny, Or Fate, Or Only A Degenerative Nerve Disease Called Rabies. Free Will Was Not A Factor.

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.

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 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.

I Hated School. I Don't Trust Anybody Who Looks Back On The Years From 14 To 18 With Any Enjoyment. If You Liked Being A Teenager, There's Something Really Wrong With You.

Any Statement Beginning With The Words 'in Truth' Is Almost Always A Lie.

The Mind Can Calculate, But The Spirit Yearns, And The Heart Knows What The Heart Knows

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.

In Many Ways, Eulah-beulah Prepared Me For Literary Criticism. After Having A Two-hundred-pound Babysitter Fart On Your Face And Yell Pow!, The Village Voice Holds Few Terrors.

Anywhere In New York, Anywhere In The Country, Somewhere There's Going To Be A Coke Sign. People Identify With Coke. You Can Write A Novel About New York And People From The Country Will Read It If They Feel That You've Made Them Familiar With New York.

A Cowardly Leader Is The Most Dangerous Of Men.

Do You Drink?" "of Course,i Just Said I Was A Writer.

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

Sometimes Dead Is Better

There's A Saying - "write What You Know." It's Bad Advice If You Take It As An Unbreakable Rule, But Good Advice If You Use It As A Foundation.

Humor Is Almost Always Anger With Its Make-up On.

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

He Was A Romantic In His Own Harsh Way…yet He Was Also Realist Enough To Know That Some Times Love Actually Did Conquer All.

I Started Off Thinking Eminem Was A Flash In The Pan, A Kind Of Hip-hop Hanson Brother. How Wrong I Was. Recovery Is Sometimes Funny, Sometimes Terrible, Always Painfully Honest. The Matching Of Eminem And Rihanna On "love The Way You Lie" Is Pure Genius. "not Afraid" Is Pretty Great Too.

Of Course They Had More Chains On Him Than Scrooge Saw On Marley's Ghost, But He Could Have Kicked Up Dickens If He'd Wanted. That's A Pun, Son.

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.

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

Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

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.

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

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

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

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

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset. The Story Informs The Theme For Me Rather Than The Other Way Around. But As It Happens... This Is, At Least To A Degree, About Getting Old And The Rapid Passage Of Our Lives.

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

Reading A Good Long Novel Is In Many Ways Like Having A Long And Satisfying Affair

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

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."

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.

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

Multiple Choice

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

True Friendship

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

Busy As A One Legged Man In An Ass Kicking Contest.

When The Time Is Gone, You Can Never Get It Back.

The Harder You Had To Work To Open A Package, The Less You Ended Up Caring About What Was Inside.

What We Like To Think Of Ourselves And What We Really Are Rarely Have Much In Common.

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

No One Can Be As Intellectually Slothful As A Really Smart Person

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.

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

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

We Either Learn To Accept Or We End Up Writing Letters Home With Crayons.

As It Happened, All Three Of Us Turned Out To Be Real Writers--a Coincidence Almost Too Large To Be Termed Mere Coincidence In A Society Where Literally Tens Of Thousands (maybe Hundreds Of Thousands) Of College Students Aspire To The Writer's Trade And Where Bare Hundreds Actually Break Through.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

He Understood Well Enough How A Man With A Choice Between Pride And Responsibility Will Almost Always Choose Pride--if Responsibility Robs Him Of His Manhood.

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John C. Danforth

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