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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.

-Stephen King

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It Was How Wars

Stephen King

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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.

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

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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!

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The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

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I Don't Mean That Creative People Are Somehow Finer, Or More Sensitive, And Thus Have Finer, More Sensitive Nervous Breakdowns - You Can Save That Horseshit For The Sylvia Plath Worshipers. It's Just That Creative People Have Creative Breakdowns.

City Life Is No Life For A Country Man; For Such A Man That Life Is A Kind Of Damnation In Itself.

The Good Folks Mostly Win, Courage Usually Triumphs Over Fear, The Family Dog Hardly Ever Contracts Rabies: These Are Things I Knew At Twenty-five, And Things I Still Know Now, At The Age Of 25 X 2. But I Know Something Else As Well: There's A Place In Most Of Us Where The Rain Is Pretty Much Constant, The Shadows Are Always Long, And The Woods Are Full Of Monsters. It Is Good To Have A Voice In Which The Terrors Of Such A Place Can Be Articulated And Its Geography Partially Described, Without Denying The Sunshine And Clarity That Fill So Much Of Our Ordinary Lives. (viii)

Give Me Just Enough Information So That I Can Lie Convincingly.

French Is The Language That Turns Dirt Into Romance.

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

There's Two Kinds Of Evil That Horror Fiction Always Deals With. One Kind Is The Sort Of Evil That Comes From Inside People, Like In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. The Other Kind Of Evil Is Predestined Evil. It Falls On You Like A Stroke Of Lightning. That's The Scary Stuff, But, In A Way, It's The Stuff You Don't Have To Worry About. I Gotta Worry Whether Or Not I'm Getting Cavities. I Gotta Worry About Whether Cigarettes Are Giving Me Cancer. Those Are Things I Can Change. Don't Give Me Lightning Out Of A Clear Sky. If That Hits Me I Just Say, "that's Probably The Way God Meant It To Be."

The Rope By Which The Great Blocks Of Taxes Are Attached To Any Citizenry Is Simple Loyalty.

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

‎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.

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.

You Cant Be Too Careful On A Skateboard.

There Are A Lot Of People In The Field [ Of Horror Stories] That I Do Read. There Is A Lot Of Stuff That Is Written In This Field, Though, That Is Not Very Good. You Just Have To Look For The Good Stuff.

I Work To Loud Music - Hard-rock Stuff Like Ac/dc, Guns 'n Roses, And Metallica Have Always Been Particular Favorites - But For Me The Music Is Just Another Way Of Shutting The Door.

But Writers Invite Ghosts, Maybe; Along With Actors And Artists, They Are The Only Totally Accepted Mediums Of Our Society. They Make Worlds That Never Were, Populate Them With People Who Never Existed, And Then Invite Us To Join Them In Their Fantasies. And We Do It, Don't We? Yes. We Pay To Do It.

You've Got To Do Something To Fill Up Your Day. And I Can Only Play So Much Guitar And Watch So Many Tv Shows. It Fulfills Me. There Are Two Things About It I Like: It Makes Me Happy, And It Makes Other People Happy.

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.

Sarcastic People Tend To Be Marshmallows Underneath The Armor

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.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

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

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.

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.

... Don't Let Your Elders And Supposed Betters Tell You Any Different. Sure, You've Never Been To Paris. No, You Never Ran With The Bulls At Pamploma. Yes, You're A Pissant Who Had No Hair In Your Armpits Until Three Years Ago - But So What? If You Don't Start Out Too Big For Your Britches, How Are You Gonna Fill 'em When You Grow Up? Let It Rip Regardless Of What Anybody Tells You, That's My Idea; Sit Down An Smoke That Baby.

A Short Story Is A Different Thing All Together - A Short Story Is Like A Kiss In The Dark From A Stranger.

No Matter How Many Times You Shake It The Last Drop Always Ends Up In Your Pants

If You Have Given Up Your Heart ... You Have Already Lost. A Heartless Creature Is A Loveless Creature, And A Loveless Creature Is A Beast.

Reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer's Life." -

Every Religion Lies. Every Moral Precept Is A Delusion. Even The Stars Are A Mirage. The Truth Is Darkness, And The Only Thing That Matters Is Making A Statement Before One Enters It. Cutting The Skin Of The World And Leaving A Scar. That's All History Is, After All: Scar Tissue.

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