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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.

-Stephen King

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Readers Have A Loyalty

Stephen King

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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.

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More From Stephen King

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.

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

My Father Had Taught Me - Mostly By Example - That If A Man Wanted To Be In Charge Of His Life, He Had To Be In Charge Of His Problems.

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

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.

Be True, Be Brave, Stand All The Rest Is Darkness.

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.

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.

...you Need Openness And Inability To Do Anything Other Than Get To The Point.

You Cannot Friend A Hawk, They Said, Unless You Are A Hawk Yourself, Alone And Only A Sojourner In The Land, Without Friends Or The Need Of Them.

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

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

But I Believe In Love, You Know; Love Is A Uniquely Portable Magic. I Don’t Think It’s In The Stars, But I Do Believe That Blood Calls To Blood And Mind Calls To Mind And Heart To Heart.

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

Kill You All!" The Clown Was Laughing And Screaming. "try To Stop Me And I'll Kill You All! Drive You Crazy And Then Kill You All! You Can't Stop Me!

I Think That Marijuana Should Not Only Be Legal, I Think It Should Be A Cottage Industry. It Would Be Wonderful For The State Of Maine. There's Some Pretty Good Homegrown Dope. I'm Sure It Would Be Even Better If You Could Grow It With Fertilizers And Have Greenhouses.

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.

Who Gets To Be Best-liked In Any Community? Who Is The Most Trusted? Why, The Man Who Does The Dirty Job, Of Course, And Does It With A Smile. The Man Who Does The Job You Couldn't Bring Yourself To Do.

Not Writing Would Be Like Going The Rest Of Your Life Without Having Dreams.

They Say That Loving Eyes Can Never See, But That's A Fool's Axiom. Sometimes, They See Too Much

Zombies Are The New Vampire.

Talent Renders The Whole Idea Of Rehearsal Meaningless; When You Find Something At Which You Are Talented, You Do It (whatever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Are Ready To Fall Out Of Your Head. Even When No One Is Listening (or Reading Or Watching), Every Outing Is A Bravura Performance, Because You As The Creator Are Happy. Perhaps Even Ecstatic.

It Hurts To Imagine Stuff. It Can Give You A Headache. Probably Doesn't Hurt Physically, But It Hurts Mentally. But The More That You Can Do It, The More You're Able To Get Out Of It. Everybody Has That Capacity, But I Don't Think Everyone Develops It.

The Man In Black Travels With Your Soul In His Pocket.

Human Nature Baby, Grab It And Growl.

I Just Write About What I Feel I Want To Write About. I'm Like A Kid. I Get An Idea, And It's Like A Kid's Toy That You Push And Tug Around The Room. It's Fun, It's Bright, It's Pretty And Maybe It'll Go Clack-clack Or Whiz-whiz, Whatever It Happens To Do. I Like To Make Believe.

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

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.

Time Is A Keyhole.... We Sometimes Bend And Peer Through It. And The Wind We Feel On Our Cheeks When We Do--the Wind That Blows Through The Keyhole--is The Breath Of All The Living Universe.

Once I Start Work On A Project, I Don’t Stop And I Don’t Slow Down Unless I Absolutely Have To. If I Don’t Write Every Day, The Characters Begin To Stale Off In My Mind – They Begin To Seem Like Characters Instead Of Real People. The Tale’s Narrative Cutting Edge Starts To Rust And I Begin To Lose My Hold On The Story’s Plot And Pace. Worst Of All, The Excitement Of Spinning Something New Begins To Fade. The Work Starts To Feel Like Work, And For Most Writers That Is The Smooch Of Death.

I Was Being Paid To Do What I Loved, And There's No Gig On Earth Better Than That; It's Like A License To Steal.

You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

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

If It's Ka It'll Come Like A Wind, And Your Plans Will Stand Before It No More Than A Barn Before A Cyclone

Roland Could Not Understand Why Anyone Would Want Cocaine Or Any Other Illegal Drug, For That Matter, In A World Where Such A Powerful One As Sugar Was So Plentiful And Cheap.

Must You Write Complete Sentences Each Time, Every Time? Perish The Thought. If Your Work Consists Only Of Fragments And Floating Clauses, The Grammar Police Aren't Going To Come And Take You Away. Even William Strunk, That Mussolini Of Rhetoric, Recognized The Delicious Pliability Of Language. "it Is An Old Observation," He Writes, "that The Best Writers Sometimes Disregard The Rules Of Rhetoric." Yet He Goes On To Add This Thought, Which I Urge You To Consider: "unless He Is Certain Of Doing Well, [the Writer] Will Probably Do Best To Follow The Rules."

Oh Christ, He Groaned To Himself, If This Is The Stuff Adults Have To Think About I Never Want To Grow Up

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

There Is A Story In The Book Night Shift, Called 'the Mangler,' About A Laundry Machine That Takes On A Sort Of Malignant Life. I Worked In A Laundry For About A Year And A Half After I Got Out Of College. It Was The Only Job I Could Find To Support My Wife And Our First Child. There Was A Fellow There That Had No Hands Or Forearms. He Simply Had Hooks. This Is One Of The Things That They Don't Tell You About When You Become Management. You Have To Wear A Tie. It Was This Fellow's Tie That Did Him In.

What Charitable 1 Percenters Can't Do Is Assume Responsibility - America's National Responsibilities: The Care Of Its Sick And Its Poor, The Education Of Its Young, The Repair Of Its Failing Infrastructure, The Repayment Of Its Staggering War Debts.

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

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

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

Ka Was A Wheel; It Was Also A Net From Which None Ever Escaped.

It Means That No Blue Ribbon Is Forever. Someday - If The World Doesn't Explode Itself In The Meantime - Someone Will Run A Two-minute Mile In The Olympics. It May Take A Hundred Years Or A Thousand, But It Will Happen. Because There Is No Ultimate Blue Ribbon. There Is Zero, And There Is Eternity, And There Is Mortality, But There Is No Ultimate.

First Comes Smiles, Then Lies. Last Is Gunfire.-roland Deschain, Of Gilead

Sometimes Dead Is Better

The Color White Is The Absence Of Memory.

We All Float Down Here!

Fantasy Fiction Is Essentially About The Concept Of Power; Great Fantasy Fiction Is About People Who Find It At Great Cost Or Lose It Tragically; Mediocre Fantasy Fiction Is About People Who Have It And Never Lose It But Simply Wield It.

Love Is What Moves The World, I've Always Thought...it Is The Only Thing Which Allows Men And Women To Stand In A World Where Gravity Always Seems To Want To Pull Them Down...bring Them Low...and Make Them Crawl.

Do It For Joy And You Can Do It Forever

The Age Of The Book Is Not Over. No Way... But Maybe The Age Of Some Books Is Over. People Say To Me Sometimes 'steve, Are You Ever Going To Write A Straight Novel, A Serious Novel' And By That They Mean A Novel About College Professors Who Are Having Impotence Problems Or Something Like That. And I Have To Say Those Things Just Don't Interest Me. Why? I Don't Know. But It Took Me About Twenty Years To Get Over That Question, And Not Be Kind Of Ashamed About What I Do, Of The Books I Write.

You Know," King Said, "i'm Not Much Good At Telling Stories. That Sounds Like A Paradox, But It's Not; It's The Reason I Write Them Down.

It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces, And Makes Us Look Like Family.

Hearts Can Break. Yes, Hearts Can Break. Sometimes I Think It Would Be Better If We Died When They Did, But We Don't.

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.

A Lot Of Us Grow Up And We Grow Out Of The Literal Interpretation That We Get When We're Children, But We Bear The Scars All Our Life. Whether They're Scars Of Beauty Or Scars Of Ugliness, It's Pretty Much In The Eye Of The Beholder.

Jk Rowling Created Seven Horcruxes. She Put A Part Of Her Soul In Every Book And Now Her Books Will Live Forever

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

The Terror, Which Would Not End For Another 28 Years-if It Ever Did End-began, So Far As I Know Or Can Tell, With A Boat Made From A Sheet Of Newspaper Floating Down A Gutter Swollen With Rain.

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.

Remember In Elementary School You Were Told That In Case Of Fire You Have To Line Up Quietly In A Single File From Smallest To Tallest? What Is The Logic In That? What, Do Tall People Burn Slower?

When Asked, "how Do You Write?" I Invariably Answer, "one Word At A Time," And The Answer Is Invariably Dismissed. But That Is All It Is. It Sounds Too Simple To Be True, But Consider The Great Wall Of China, If You Will: One Stone At A Time, Man. That's All. One Stone At A Time. But I've Read You Can See That Motherfucker From Space Without A Telescope.

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.

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.

Every Liberal In The Country Must Watch Fox News For One Year, And Every Conservative In The Country Must Watch Msnbc For One Year. (middle-of-the-roaders Could Stick With Csi)

There Were Times . . . When It Occurred To Me That I Was Repeating My Mother's Life. Usually This Thought Struck Me As Funny. But If I Happened To Be Tired, Or If There Were Extra Bills To Pay And No Money To Pay Them With, It Seemed Awful. I'd Think 'this Isn't The Way Our Lives Are Supposed To Be Going.' Then I'd Think 'half The World Has The Same Idea.

The World Was The Overlook Hotel, Where The Party Never Ended. Where The Dead Were Alive Forever.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

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.

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.

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.

I've Taken Off Two Months, Three Months At A Time, And, By The End, I Get Really Squirrelly. My Night Life, My Dream Life, Gets Extremely Populated And Crazed.

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.

For Some Reason California's Always Been Where The Struggle Is About How Much Authority You Can Impose On People's Private Lives. It Seems To Show Up There Most Clearly. They Had A Helmet Law For Motorcycles In California And The Bikies Were Saying Things Like, "it Restricts My Vision. I Can't Hear What My Bike's Doing. If It Was On Fire I Wouldn't Know It Until My Ass Caught." And At The Bottom Line What The Bikies Were Saying Was, "look, It's My Goddamn Head And If I Want To Splatter My Brains All Over The Guardrails On The Coast Highway, Super For Me."

Fools Are The Only Folk On The Earth Who Can Absolutely Count On Getting What They Deserve.

There Is No Gain Without Risk, Perhaps No Risk Without Love.

For Men, I Think, Love Is A Thing Formed Of Equal Parts Lust And Astonishment. The Astonishment Part Women Understand. The Lust Part They Only Think They Understand.

Fear Stands For Face Everything And Recover – Old Aa Saying

I'm Having A Magenta Day. Not Just Red, But Magenta!

I Wanted To Say Goodbye To Someone, And Have Someone Say Goodbye To Me. The Goodbyes We Speak And The Goodbyes We Hear Are The Goodbyes That Tell Us We´re Still Alive.

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.

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

But It's Writing, Damn It, Not Washing The Car Or Putting On Eyeliner. If You Can Take It Seriously, We Can Do Business. If You Can't Or Won't, It's Time For You To Close The Book And Do Something Else. Wash The Car, Maybe.

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.

In Small Towns People Scent The Wind With Noses Of Uncommon Keenness.

Fault Always Lies In The Same Place: With Him Weak Enough To Lay Blame.

He Remembered Waking Up Once, Listening To The Wind, Thinking Of All The Dark And Rushing Cold Outside And All The Warmth Of This Bed, Filled With Their Peaceful Heat Under Two Quilts, And Wishing It Could Be Like This Forever.

We Lie Best When We Lie To Ourselves.

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.

I Know I Can Do It," Todd Downey Said, Helping Himself To Another Ear Of Corn From The Steaming Bowl. "i'm Sure That In Time Her Death Will Be A Mystery, Even To Me.

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.

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

We Make Up Horrors To Help Us Cope With The Real Ones.

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

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.

He Would Write It For The Reason He Felt That All Great Literature, Fiction And Nonfiction, Was Written: Truth Comes Out, In The End It Always Comes Out. He Would Write It Because He Felt He Had To.

The Late Afternoon Sunlight, Warm As Oil, Sweet As Childhood.

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

No Writer, Painter, Or Actor - No Artist - Is Ever Handed A Sharp Knife (although A Few People Are Handed Almighty Big Ones; The Name We Give To The Artist With The Big Knife Is 'genius'), And We Hone With Varying Degrees Of Zeal And Aptitude.

Pray For Rain While Digging A Well.

They Were Still All Beautiful And There Was Still Enchantment And Wonder, But She Had Crossed A Line And Now The Fairy Tale Was Green With Corruption And Evil.

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

Any Word You Have To Hunt For In A Thesaurus Is The Wrong Word. There Are No Exceptions To This Rule.

Thought Provoking

His Mother Called Such People Ignorant And Superstitious, But His Father Only Shook His Head Slowly And Puffed His Pipe And Said That Sometimes Old Stories Had A Grain Or Two Of Truth In Them And It Was Best Not To Take Chances. It Was Why, He Said, He Crossed Himself Whenever A Black Cat Crossed His Path.

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

Wow. This Makes Grand Central Look Like A Bus Stop In Buttfuck Nebraska.

I Realized The Shells Were Talking In A Voice I Recognized. I Should Have; It Was My Own. Had I Always Known That? I Suppose I Had. On Some Level, Unless We're Mad, I Think Most Of Us Know The Various Voices Of Our Own Imaginations. And Of Our Memories, Of Course. They Have Voices, Too. Ask Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Limb Or A Child Or A Long-cherished Dream. Ask Anyone Who Blames Himself For A Bad Decision, Usually Made In A Raw Instant (an Instant That Is Most Commonly Red). Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

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.

An Idea Is Like A Cold Germ: Sooner Or Later Someone Always Catches It.

The Only Leverage The Manufacturer Can Apply To The Retailer Is His Relationship With The Consumer. And The Main Element In Profit Growth Is Going To Have To Lie In Making His Brand More Valuable To The Retailer, Through Its Being More Valuable To The Consumer. And That Means His Brand Must Be Unique, It Must Have No Adequate Direct Substitutes - Because It Is In This, After All, That Value Lies.

For Me, Good Description Usually Consists Of A Few Well-chosen Details That Will Stand For Everything Else.

He Looked To Her Like An Absurd Twentieth-century Hamlet, An Indecisive Figure So Mesmerized By Onrushing Tragedy That He Was Helpless To Divert Its Course Or Alter It In Any Way.

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.

The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

If You Think You've Gone Insane ... You're Nuts.

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.

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.

They Had Become A Fixed Star In The Shifting Firmament Of The High School's Relationships, The Acknowledged Romeo And Juliet. And She Knew With Sudden Hatefulness That There Was One Couple Like Them In Every White Suburban High School In America.

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 Kids Accepted My Drinking As A Part Of Life. Not A Particularly Pernicious Part. I Didn't Beat Up On Them. Basically I Don't Think I Was So Different From A Lot Of Dads Who Have Three Or Four Martinis When They Get In From Work, Wine With Dinner And So On.

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.

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.

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.

Make-up Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

As A Teenager, I Read A Lot Of H.p. Lovecraft, So I Wrote Like H.p. Lovecraft. And In My 20s, I Read A Lot Of Ross Macdonald And Raymond Chandler, So I Wrote Like Those Guys. But, Little By Little, You Develop Your Own Style.

Working With Him Was Sort Of Like Trying To Defuse A Bomb With Somebody Standing Behind You And Every Now And Then Clashing A Pair Of Cymbals Together. In A Word, Upsetting.

Don't Let The Door Hitcha Where The Good Lord Splitcha.

You Could Start At A Path Leading Nowhere More Fantastic Than From Your Own Front Steps To The Sidewalk, And From There You Could Go… Well, Anywhere At All.

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

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

Even The Company Of The Mad Was Better Than The Company Of The Dead.

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

I Can't Lie And Say There Are No Bad Writers. Sorry, But There Are Lots Of Bad Writers.

I Think The Best Stories Always End Up Being About The People Rather Than The Event, Which Is To Say Character-driven.

Kill If You Will, But Command Me Nothing!

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

Time Heals All Wounds.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

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.

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.

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

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

She Couldn't Be On His Wavelength All The Time. That's All. When You Could Recognize That And Deal With It, You Were On Your Way To An Adult Relationship.

I Think You're A Taker. You've Always Been One. It's Like God Left Some Part Of You Out When He Built You Inside Of Me.

Only God Gets Things Right The First Time.

It's Better To Be Good Than Evil, But One Achieves Goodness At A Terrific Cost.

It's A Little Place On The Pacific Ocean. You Know What The Mexicans Say About The Pacific? They Say It Has No Memory. That's Where I Want To Live The Rest Of My Life. A Warm Place With No Memory.

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.

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

There's One Novel, Cujo, That I Barely Remember Writing At All.

I've Given Up Thinking - It Keeps Getting Me Into Trouble.

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

I Tend To Scare Myself.

She Had Never Dreamed There Could Be So Much Pain In A Life When There Was Nothing Physically Wrong. She Hurt All The Time.

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

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.

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

All Right I Think We've Been Down Here In The Dark Long Enough. There's A Whole Other World Upstairs. Take My Hand Constant Reader And I'll Be Happy To Lead You Back Into The Sunshine. I'm Happy To Go There Because I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

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.

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

I Like To End Stories Where The Readers Have A Little Room To Run. They Can Resolve Things As They Like In Their Own Mind.

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 Wouldn't Have Missed A Single Minute Of It, Not For The Whole World.

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.

If You Intend To Write As Truthfully As You Can, Your Days As A Member Of Polite Society Are Numbered.

It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair. So Cried His Child's Heart, And Then His Child's Heart Died A Little. For That Is Also The Way Of The World.

Writing Is Seduction.

The Scariest Moment Is Always Just Before You Start.

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

No One Likes To See A Government Folder With His Name On It.

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

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 So Afraid That All I Can Reach Will Lead Me To All I Dare Not See.

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.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open.

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.

Symbolism Exists To Adorn And Enrich, Not To Create An Artificial Sense Of Profundity.

Everybody Wants To Psychoanalyze Horror. They Don't Want To Psychoanalyze A Book Like Gay Talese's "sex With Your Neighbor" [sic] Or Something Like That. It's Pretty Much Accepted That Americans Should Be Interested In Who They're Diddling And How They're Doing It.

We Live In A Society Now Where The Sexual Taboo For Children Has Really Passed By The Wayside. Any Nineyear-old Can Go Into A 7-11 And Check Out The Playmate Of The Month, But You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Death. You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Disfigurement. You Don't Want 'em To Know About Creepy Things Because It Might Warp Their Little Minds.

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

God Doesn't Bribe, Child. He Just Makes A Sign And Lets People Take It As They Will.

Most Gothics Are Overplotted Novels Whose Success Or Failure Hinges On The Author's Ability To Make You Believe In The Characters And Partake Of The Mood.

You Don't Always Talk With Your Mouth. Sometimes What You Say With Your Mouth Hardly Matters At All. You Have To Signify

Because The Hardest Boss A Man Can Ever Have Is Himself.

How To Draw A Picture (xii) Know When You're Finished, And When You Are, Put Your Pencil Or Your Paintbrush Down. All The Rest Is Only Life.

Long Days And Pleasant Nights

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

Fantasy And Reality

The Lord Is My Shepherd. I Shall Not Want For Nothing. He Makes Me Lie Down In The Green Pastures. He Greases Up My Head With Oil. He Gives Me Kung-fu In The Face Of My Enemies. Amen

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.

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

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.

This Is Probably The Single Great Subject Of Horror Fiction: Our Need To Cope With A Mystery That Can Be Understood Only With The Aid Of A Helpful Imagination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Richard E. Grant

Desiderius Erasmus

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