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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.

-Stephen King

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Terrible Thing To Live

Stephen King

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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.

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I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

But Who Can Foresee Such Things? None Of Us Can Predict The Final Outcomes Of Our Actions, And Few Of Us Even Try; Most Of Us Just Do What We Do To Prolong A Moment's Pleasure Or To Stop The Pain. And Even When We Act For The Noblest Reasons, The Last Link Of The Chain All Too Often Drips With Someone's Blood.

...women Are Better At Keeping Secrets, But Men Are More Comfortable With Them.

Keeping Secrets

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.

" 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.

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

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...logic Can Be Happily Tossed Out The Window.

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.

Pain Is The Biggest Power Of Love.

A Marriage Was Like A House Under Constant Construction, Each Year Seeing The Completion Of New Rooms. A First-year Marriage Was A Cottage; One That Had Gone On For Twenty-seven Years Was A Huge And Rambling Mansion. There Were Bound To Be Crannies And Storage Spaces, Most Of Them Dusty And Abandoned, Some Containing A Few Unpleasant Relics You Would Just As Soon You Hadn't Found. But That Was No Biggie. You Either Threw Those Relics Out Or Took Them To Goodwill.

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.

One Of Life's Great Truths Is This: When One Is About To Be Struck By A Speeding Six-hundred Pound Coke Machine, One Need Worry About Little Else.

They Had Discovered One Could Grow As Hungry For Light As For Food.

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

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

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

...it Was More Like Bleeding Than Crying.

The Wonder Is That So Many Ocds Manage To Live Productive Lives, Just The Same. They Work, They Eat (often Not Enough Or Too Much, It's True), They Go To The Movies, They Make Love To Their Girlfriends And Boyfriends, Their Wives And Husbands... And All The Time Those Birds Are There, Clinging To Them And Pecking Away Little Bits Of Flesh.

Productive Life

And That Almost Killed You?" "it Wasn't Deep But It Got Infected. Infection Means That The Bad Germs Got Into It. Infection's The Most Dangerous Thing There Is, Tom. Infection Was What Made The Superflu Germ Kill All The People. And Infection Is What Made People Want To Make The Germ In The First Place. An Infection Of The Mind.

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?

We Never Cease Wanting What We Want, Whether It's Good For Us Or Not.

Nothing Is Ever Lost, Sarah. Nothing That Can't Be Found.

I'm Still In Love With What I Do, With The Idea Of Making Things Up, So Hours When I Write Always Feel Like Very Blessed Hours To Me.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

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

Good Reputation

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.

I Do Believe That When We're In The Process Of Dying, That All These Emergency Circuits In The Brain Take Over. I Base What I'm Saying Not On Any Empirical Evidence. I Think It's Very Possible That When You're Dying, These Circuits Open Up, Which Would Explain This Whole White-light Phenomena - When People Clinically Die And They See Their Relatives And Stuff And Say, "hello, It's Great To See You."

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.

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

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.

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.

I Recognize Terror As The Finest Emotion And So I Will Try To Terrorize The Reader. But If I Find That I Cannot Terrify, I Will Try To Horrify, And If I Find That I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross-out. I'm Not Proud.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The More Fiction You Read And Write, The More You'll Find Your Paragraphs Forming On Their Own.

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

I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

Friends Come In And Out Of Our Lives, Like Busboys In A Restaurant.

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.

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

A Little Talent Is A Good Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer. But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember Every Scar.

Amateurs Sit And Wait For Inspiration, The Rest Of Us Just Get Up And Go To Work.

Procrastination

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.

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.

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.

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

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

Black As Night And As Beautiful As Forever.

I Have Grown Into A Bestsellasaurus Rex - A Big, Stumbling Book-beast That Is Loved When It Shits Money And Hated When It Tramples Houses... I Started Out As A Storyteller; Along The Way I Became An Economic Force.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

I Find I'm So Excited I Can Barely Sit Still Or Hold A Thought In My Head. I Think It Is The Excitement Only A Free Man Can Feel, A Free Man At The Start Of A Long Journey Whose Conclusion Is Uncertain. I Hope I Can Make It Across The Border. I Hope To See My Friend, And Shake His Hand. I Hope The Pacific Is As Blue As It Has Been In My Dreams. I Hope.

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.

The Past Is Obdurate.

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

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

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.

Teddy, Vern, Chris: I Don't Shut Up. I Grow Up. And When I Look At You, I Throw Up. Aghhh! Gordie: And Then Your Mom Goes Around The Corner And She Licks It Up.

Shall There Be Truth Between Us, As Two Men? Not As Friends, But As Enemies And Equals?

I Think Most Of Us Are Fascinated By The Macabre And By The Weird And Even The Nastiness That Comes Along.

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

That Was What I Wanted, But I Don't Need It To Be Gone. I Can Love You And I Can Love Life And Bear The Pain All At The Same Time. I Think The Pain Might Even Make The Rest Better, The Way A Good Setting Can Make A Diamond Look Better.

Let Me Tell You Something My Friend. Hope Is A Dangerous Thing. Hope Can Drive A Man Insane.

There Were People Who Lied For Gain, People Who Lied From Pain, People Who Lied Simply Because The Concept Of Telling The Truth Was Utterly Alien To Them . . . And Then There Were People Who Lied Because They Were Waiting For It To Be Time To Tell The Truth.

The Water Was Glassy And Calm, Still Candy-colored In The Afterglow Of Sunset.

It's Dialogue That Gives Your Cast Their Voices, And Is Crucial In Defining Their Characters.

You Can't Polish A Turd.

Sometimes The Embers Are Better Than The Campfire.

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.

Sometimes [...] Real Love Is Silent As Well As Blind.

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

The Most Important Things To Remember About Back Story Are That (a) Everyone Has A History And (b) Most Of It Isn’t Very Interesting.

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.

I Didn't Want To Even Stand Next To Any High Rise Building As Long As I Lived... I Didn't Even Want To Go Over A Bridge.

"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."

Drive Away And Try To Keep Smiling. Get A Little Rock And Roll On The Radio And Go Toward Life With All The Courage You Can Find And All The Belief You Can Muster. Be True, Be Brave, Stand.

The Advantage Of Horror Books Is To Take The Reader And Cut Him Out Of The Pack And Work On Him One On One. It Has Its Advantages Because The People That Are There In The Movie Theater Really Are A Mob. If You Get One Guy Alone You Can Do A More Efficient Job Of Scaring Him.

When I Gave Up Dope And Alcohol, My Immediate Feeling Was 'i've Saved My Life, But There'll Be A Price Because I'll Have Nothing That Buzzes Me Any More'. But I Enjoyed My Kids. My Wife Loved Me And I Loved Her. And Eventually The Writing Came Back And I Discovered That The Writing Was Enough. Stupid Thing Is That Probably It Always Had Been.

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.

A Person's Memory Is Everything, Really. Memory Is Identity. It's You.

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

There's A Mr. Hyde For Every Happy Jekyll Face, A Dark Face On The Other Side Of The Mirror.

You Couldn't Get Hold Of The Things You'd Done And Turn Them Right Again. Such A Power Might Be Given To The Gods, But It Was Not Given To Women And Men, And That Was Probably A Good Thing. Had It Been Otherwise, People Would Probably Die Of Old Age Still Trying To Rewrite Their Teens.

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

If The Stuff You're Writing Is Not For Yourself, It Won't Work.

The Ghost Story Movie That Scared Me The Most Was The Changeling With George C. Scott. I Think That's Sometimes Overlooked, But It's A Wonderful Piece Of Work.

It Was Like Drowning, Only From The Inside Out.

You Could Not Turn Off Love- Even The Rather Absent, Sometimes Taken For Granted Love- The Way You'd Turn Off A Faucet. Love Ran From The Heart And The Heart Had It's Own Imperatives

He Began To Cry, Not Hysterically Or Screaming As People Cry When Concealed Rage With Tears, But With Continuous Sobs Who Has Just Discovered That He's Alone And Will Be For Long. He Cried Because Safety And Reason Seemed To Have Left The World. Loneliness Was A Reality, But In This Situation Madness Was Also Remotely A Possibility.

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

I Have Two Amazing Things In My Life: I'm Pain-free And I'm Debt-free.

See The Bear Of Fearsome Size! All The World's Within His Eyes. Time Grows Thin, The Past Is A Riddle; The Tower Awaits You In The Middle.

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.

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

There Are All Sorts Of Theories And Ideas About What Constitutes A Good Opening Line. It's Tricky Thing, And Tough To Talk About Because I Don't Think Conceptually While I Work On A First Draft -- I Just Write. To Get Scientific About It Is A Little Like Trying To Catch Moonbeams In A Jar. But There's One Thing I'm Sure About. An Opening Line Should Invite The Reader To Begin The Story. It Should Say: Listen. Come In Here. You Want To Know About This.

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

Your Job Isn't To Find These Ideas But To Recognize Them When They Show Up.

When Love Leaves The World, All Hearts Are Still. Tell Them Of My Love And Tell Them Of My Pain And Tell Them Of My Hope, Which Still Lives. For This Is All I Have And All I Am And All I Ask.

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

By Its Very Nature, Film Is Supposed To Be An Accessible Medium To Everybody.

I Don't Spend The Day Writing. I'll Maybe Write Fresh Copy For Two Hours, And Then I'll Go Back And Revise Some Of It And Print What I Like And Then Turn It Off.

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.

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.

Might As Well Try To Drink The Ocean With A Spoon As Argue With A Lover.

People Think That I Must Be A Very Strange Person. This Is Not Correct. I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy. It Is In A Glass Jar On My Desk.

Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

Once, During The Drinking Phase, Wendy Had Accused Him Of Desiring His Own Destruction But Not Possessing The Necessary Moral Fiber To Support A Full-blown Deathwish. So He Manufactured Ways In Which Other People Could Do It, Lopping A Piece At A Time Off Himself And Their Family.

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

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

There Are Things Of Such Darkness And Horror—just, I Suppose, As There Are Things Of Such Great Beauty—that They Will Not Fit Through The Puny Human Doors Of Perception.

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

Like Anything Else That Happens On Its Own, The Act Of Writing Is Beyond Currency. Money Is Great Stuff To Have, But When It Comes To The Act Of Creation, The Best Thing Is Not To Think Of Money Too Much. It Constipates The Whole Process.

Fighting For Peace, Is Like F***ing For Chastity

Directing Teenage Actors Is Like Juggling Jars Of Nitro-glycerine: Exhilarating And Dangerous.

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.

Life Is Like A Wheel. Sooner Or Later, It Always Come Around To Where You Started Again.

Sooner Or Later

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

A Life Without Love Is Like A Tree Without Fruit.

Inspirational Love

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

The Concept Of Dreaming Is Known To The Waking Mind But To The Dreamer There Is No Waking, No Real World, No Sanity; There Is Only The Screaming Bedlam Of Sleep.

High School Isn't A Very Important Place. When You're Going You Think It's A Big Deal, But When It's Over Nobody Really Thinks It Was Great Unless They're Beered Up.

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.

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

As Far As Where I Go When I Die, The Concept That I Am Simple Going To Flick Out, Like A Light Bulb, To Me Is Not Only Spiritually Impossible To Believe, But Logically It Is Laughable - The Idea That We Simply Die And Nothing Happens.

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

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!

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?

Hug And Kiss Whoever Helped Get You - Financially, Mentally, Morally, Emotionally - To This Day. Parents, Mentors, Friends, Teachers. If You're Too Uptight To Do That, At Least Do The Old Handshake Thing, But I Recommend A Hug And A Kiss. Don't Let The Sun Go Down Without Saying Thank You To Someone, And Without Admitting To Yourself That Absolutely No One Gets This Far Alone.

Terror. When You Come Home And Notice Everything You Own Has Been Taken Away And Replaced By An Exact Substitute. It’s When The Lights Go Out And You Feel Something Behind You-you Hear It-you Feel Its Breath Against Your Ear, But When You Turn Around There’s Nothing There.

He Killed Them With Their Love.

He Had Come To Believe That Life Was A Series Of Ironic Ambushes. - Doctor Sleep

Scaring People, Especially In Our Day And Time, Is One Of The Hardest Things On Earth, As Far As I Am Concerned.

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Happy Ending. I Never Met A Single One To Equal "once Upon A Time.

Once Upon A Time

The First Thing Was To Get Down To Addie Richardson's Henhouse, And That Was A Goodish Way, Four Or Five Miles. She Found Herself Wondering If The Lord Was Going To Send Her An Eagle To Fly Her Those Four Miles, Or Send Elijah In His Fiery Chariot To Give Her A Lift. Blasphemy," She Told Herself Complacently. "the Lord Provides Strength, Not Taxicabs.

In The Year 2025, The Best Men Don't Run For President, They Run For Their Lives. . . .

I Can See Your Dirtypillows.

A Person’s Never Too Old For Stories. Man And Boy, Girl And Woman, We Live For Them. - Roland Deschain

If I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross Out. I'm Not Proud.

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

Good Description Is A Learned Skill, One Of The Prime Reasons Why You Cannot Succeed Unless You Read A Lot And Write A Lot. It’s Not Just A Question Of How-to, You See; It’s Also A Question Of How Much To. Reading Will Help You Answer How Much, And Only Reams Of Writing Will Help You With The How. You Can Learn Only By Doing.

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

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.

I Think There Ought To Be Some Serious Discussion By Smart People, Really Smart People, About Whether Or Not Proliferation Of Things Like The Smoking Gun And Tmz And Youtube And The Whole Celebrity Culture Is Healthy. We've Switched From A Culture That Was Interested In Manufacturing, Economics, Politics - Trying To Play A Serious Part In The World - To A Culture That's Really Entertainment-based. I Mean, I Know People Who Can Tell You Who Won The Last Four Seasons On American Idol And They Don't Know Who Their [bleeping] Representatives Are.

How Does It Happen That A Writer Who's Not Even Very Good - And I Can Say That, I've Read Four Or Five Of His Books - Gets To Be In Charge Of The World's Destiny? Or Of The Entire Universe's?" If He's Not Very Good, Why Didn't You Stop At One?" Mrs. Tassenbaum Smiled. "touché. He Is Readable, I'll Give Him That - Tells A Good Story.

I Am Your Number One Fan.

She Didn't See Him At First. She Was Watching The Dancers. Her Color Was High, And There Were Deep Dimples At The Corners Of Her Mouth. She Looked Nine Miles Out Of Place, But He Had Never Loved Her More. This Was Willa On The Edge Of A Smile.

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

The Real Importance Of Reading Is That It Creates An Ease & Intimacy With The Process Of Writing... It Also Offers You A Constantly Growing Knowledge Of What Has Been Done And What Hasn't, What Is Trite And What Is Fresh, What Works And What Lies There Dying (or Dead) On The Page. The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

Bird And Bear And Hare And Fish, Give My Love Her Fondest Wish.

And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

If You Can Remember All The Accessories That Go With Your Best Outfit, The Contents Of Your Purse, The Starting Lineup Of The New York Yankees Or The Houston Oilers, Or What Label "hang On Sloopy" By The Mccoys Was On, You Are Capable Of Remembering The Differences Between A Gerund (verb Form Used As A Noun) And A Participle (verb Form Used As An Adjective).

I've Said It Before, And I'll Say It Again. When You Find Something At Which You Have Talent, You Do That Thing (what Ever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Pop Out Of Your Head.

In These Silences Something May Rise

You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

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

We Lie Best When We Lie To Ourselves.

I Write About Things That Scare Me. I've Never Written A Snake Story In My Life. I Myself Have Never Written A Story About Snakes Because They Don't Scare Me. I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me.

Semi-automatic S Have Only Two Purposes. One Is So Owners Can Take Them To The Shooting Range Once In A While, Yell Yeehaw, And Get All Horny At The Rapid Fire And The Burning Vapor Spurting From The End Of The Barrel. Their Other Use-their Only Other Use-is To Kill People.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

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.

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

As With All Other Aspects Of The Narrative Art, You Will Improve With Practice, But Practice Will Never Make You Perfect. Why Should It? What Fun Would That Be?

Because Who Would Ever Want To Get Close To Another Person If They Knew How Hard The Letting-go Part Was? In Your Heart They Only Die A Little At A Time, Don't They? Like A Plant When You Go Away On A Trip And Forget To Ask A Neighbor To Poke In Once In Awhile With The Old Watering-can, And Its So Sad—

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

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

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.

I Had A Period Where I Thought I Might Not Be Good Enough To Publish.

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

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

Let's Get One Thing Clear Right Now, Shall We? There Is No Idea Dump, No Story Central, No Island Of The Buried Bestsellers; Good Story Ideas Seem To Come Quite Literally From Nowhere, Sailing At You Right Out Of The Empty Sky: Two Previously Unrelated Ideas Come Together And Make Something New Under The Sun. Your Job Isn't To Find These Ideas But To Recognize Them When They Show Up.

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!

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

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

... 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.

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).

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

Once I Fell In Love With Books, I Fell In Love Completely.

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

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

Writing Is Like Sex. The More You Think About It, The Harder It Is To Do. It's Better Not To Think About It So Much And Just Let It Happen.

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

I Have No Opinion. No, None At All. Opinion Is Politics, And Politics Is An Evil Which Has Caused Many A Fellow To Be Hung While He's Still Young And Pretty.

Semi-facetiously, When People Ask Me Why I Write These Kinds Of Stories, I Simply Say That I Was Warped As A Child. And, There Is Some Truth To That.

Why Does Everyone Think That I Am A Cruel And Insensitive Man? I Mean, Come On, I Have Kids... On My Desk In Little Jars!

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

The Mystery Of The Universe Is Not Time But Size.

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say

The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story.... Writing Is Seduction. Good Talk Is Part Of Seduction.

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.

It's A Poorboy Sanditch,' Roland Said. 'with Lots Of Mayo, Whatever That Is. I'd Want A Sauce That Didn't Look Quite So Much Like Come, Myself, But May It Do Ya Fine.

Kids, Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie, And The Truth Of This Fiction Is Simple Enough: The Magic Exists.

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

A Slice Of Pie Without Cheese Is Like A Kiss Without A Squeeze.

... Suicide Gets In The Air Sometimes. Like A Cold Germ.

Close Your Eyes And Click Your Heals Three Times...because There's No Place Like Dome.

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Richard G. Scott

Hubert Selby, Jr.

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