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Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter Is Populated With Vivid, Sympathetic Characters, And Driven By Terrors Both Human And Supernatural. It's The Kind Of Book That's Impossible To Put Down Once It Has Been Picked Up. It Kept Me Reading Far Into The Night. Straub Builds Otherworldly Terror Without Ever Losing Touch With His Attractive Cast Of Youngsters, Who Age Beautifully. Put This One High On Your List.

-Stephen King

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Terrifying. . . .

Stephen King

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Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter Is Populated With Vivid, Sympathetic Characters, And Driven By Terrors Both Human And Supernatural. It's The Kind Of Book That's Impossible To Put Down Once It Has Been Picked Up. It Kept Me Reading Far Into The Night. Straub Builds Otherworldly Terror Without Ever Losing Touch With His Attractive Cast Of Youngsters, Who Age Beautifully. Put This One High On Your List.

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On The Day Of My Judgment, When I Stand Before God, And He Asks Me Why Did I Kill One Of His True Miracles, What Am I Gonna Say? That It Was My Job? My Job?

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.

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

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He Needs To Be Corrected, If You Don't Mind Me Saying So. He Needs A Good Talking-to, And Perhaps A Bit More. My Own Girls, Sir, Didn't Care For The Overlook At First. One Of Them Actually Stole A Pack Of My Matches And Tried To Burn It Down. I Corrected Them. I Corrected Them Most Harshly. And When My Wife Tried To Stop Me From Doing My Duty, I Corrected Her.

When You Write You Tell Yourself A Story. When You Rewrite You Take Out Everything That Is Not The Story.

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 Think We Fought Vietnam For The Benefits Of Civilization, And Certainly We Fought It To Oppose Authority. To Show Our Authority, To Show We Weren't Weak. Isn't That What Nixon Kept Saying? "we Have To Show The World That We're Not Weak." So Of Course What We Ended Up Showing The World Was That We Were, Yep, Weak. 'cause We Couldn't Beat These Kids In Black Pajamas.

Death Is A Mystery, And Burial Is A Secret.

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

Only Two Things Happen To Writers When They Die: Either Their Work Survives, Or It Becomes Forgotten.

We Fool Ourselves So Much We Could Do It For A Living.

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

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

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

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.

The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

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

Even People Capable Of Living In The Past Don't Really Know What The Future Holds.

A Person Can Go Along Quite Awhile If They Get A Good Day Every Once And Again.

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?

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Clear Communication Between Selves - The Surface Self And The Deep Self - Is The Enemy Of Self-doubt. It Slays Confusion.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

True Friendship

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Laughter... Is Like A Hurricane: Once It Reaches A Certain Point, It Becomes Self-feeding, Self-supporting. You Laugh Not Because The Jokes Are Funny But Because Your Own Condition Is Funny.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Must Do Two Things Above All Others: Read A Lot And Write A Lot. There's No Way Around These Two Things That I'm Aware Of, No Shortcut.

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But Sorry Is The Kool-aid Of Human Emotions. [...] True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

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Luck's The Word Those With Poor Hearts Use For Ka.

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I Thought It Was Great Fun To Scare People. I Also Knew It Was Socially Acceptable Because There Were A Lot Of Horror Movies Out There.

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The World Had Moved On And All That Was Over, Done Before Fairly Begun.

I've Spoken Out My Whole Life Against The Idea Of Simply Dismissing Whole Areas Of Fiction By Saying It's "genre" And Therefore Can't Be Seen As Literature.

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Only Library Books Speak With Such Wordless Eloquence Of The Power Good Stories Hold Over Us.

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

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That's The Curse Of The Reading Class. We Can Be Seduced By A Good Story Even At The Most Inopportune Moments.

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Writing Is A Lonely Job. Having Someone Who Believes In You Makes A Lot If Difference. They Don't Have To Makes Speeches. Just Believing Is Usually Enough.

What Jack Didn't Understand Was That No Matter Where He Went, The Same Asshole Got Off The Plane.

Words Create Sentences; Sentences Create Paragraphs; Sometimes Paragraphs Quicken And Begin To Breathe.

Maybe That's Why God Made Us Kids First And Built Us Close To The Ground, Because He Knows You Got To Fall Down A Lot And Bleed A Lot Before You Learn That One Simple Lesson. You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

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It Hurt, Of Course, But More Often Than Not The Best Things Do, I've Found.

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

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say

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

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

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Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

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You Might Question A Winkle - A Feeling That Came To You Right Out Of The Blue - But You Didn’t Question Knowing.

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

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If We Don't Have Each Other, We Go Crazy With Loneliness. When We Do, We Go Crazy With Togetherness.

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

Do You Happen To Have Another Condom? I Think I've Discovered The Cure For Headaches.

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.

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These Self-appointed Deacons In The Church Of Latter-day American Literature Seem To Regard Generosity (of Words) With Suspicion, Texture With Dislike, And Any Broad Literary Stroke With Outright Hate. The Result Is A Strange And Arid Literary Climate Where A Meaningless Little Fingernail Paring Like Nicholson Baker's Vox Becomes An Object Of Fascinated Debate And Dissection, And A Truly Ambitious American Novel Like Matthew's Heart Of The Country Is All But Ignored.

Nora Roberts Is Cool.

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

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

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

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

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Twas Something Else. I Had Come To Hate Her, You See. I Had Come To Wish Her Dead, And That Was What Held Me Back.

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You’d Be Surprised What A Person Can Live With,” Dan Said.

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I Am Your Number One Fan.

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

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Overhead Was A Sky Blacker Than Jewlers' Velvet, And A Billion Stars Screamed Down.

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.

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

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

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. - Japanese Proverb

Japanese Proverbs

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

As Infants, Our First Victory Comes In Grasping Some Bit Of The World, Usually Our Mother's Fingers. Later We Discover That The World, And The Things Of The World, Are Grasping Us, And Have Been All Along.

How Many Have To Die Before We Will Give Up These Dangerous Toys?

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.

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

Making People Believe The Unbelievable Is No Trick; It's Work... Belief And Reader Absorption Come In The Details: An Overturned Tricycle In The Gutter Of An Abandoned Neighborhood Can Stand For Everything.

I Think Of Fear As A Survival Function, And In The Stories That I Write, The Only Thing That I've Tried To Do Is Provide People With Nightmares Which Are Really Safe Places To Put Those Fears For A While Because You Can Say Afterwards That Uh, That, That Well It Was All Just Make-believe Anyway, So I Just Took My Emotions For A Walk.

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

Like All Sweet Dreams, It Will Be Brief, But Brevity Makes Sweetness, Doesn't It?

We Need Ghost Stories Because We, In Fact, Are The Ghosts.

When You're Six, Most Of Your Bingo Balls Are Still Floating Around In The Draw-tank.

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

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.

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.

You'll Consider What You Did Wrong & Bookend Your Reflections With Hunger - No Supper, No Breakfast.

I See Things, That's All. Write Enough Stories And Every Shadow On The Floor Looks Like A Footprint; Every Line In The Dirt Like A Secret Message.

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.

The Past Is Obdurate.

Elvis Presley's Talent Brightened Millions Of Lives. He Widened The Horizons Of My World Certainly. The First Record I Ever Owned Was A 78 Rpm Of "hound Dog" Backed By "don't Be Cruel" And When I Listened To Those Tunes I Felt About Ten Feet Tall And I Grinned So Hard That I Felt Like The Corners Of My Mouth Would Meet In The Back And The Tip Of My Head Would Simply Topple Off. All I Know About Rock And Roll Is That It Makes People Feel Good. Elvis Presley More Than Made Me Feel Good, He Enriched My Life And Made It Better.

He Who Speaks Without An Attentive Ear Is Mute.

I Enjoy Going Back And Forth Between Plays And Novels. It`s Like Having A Wife And A Mistress. Books Are The Wife; Plays, The Mistress.

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

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.

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.

It's A Mystery. That's The First Thing That Interests Me About The Idea Of God. If There Is One, It's Mysterious And Powerful And Awesome To Even Consider The Concept, And You Have To Take It Seriously.

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.

It Was Always A Pleasure To Write. I Can Never Think Of A Time When I Just Hacked Something Out To Fulfil A Contract Or Meet A Deadline. I Might Have Hacked Things Out, But It Was Always Stuff I Loved.

In Both Writing And Sleeping, We Learn To Be Physically Still At The Same Time We Are Encouraging Our Minds To Unlock From The Humdrum Rational Thinking Of Our Daytime Lives.

True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

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.

...stopping A Piece Of Work Just Because It's Hard, Either Emotionally Or Imaginatively, Is A Bad Idea. Sometimes You Have To Go On When You Don't Feel Like It, And Sometimes You're Doing Good Work When If Feels Like All You're Managing Is To Shovel Sh*t From A Sitting Position.

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