Background Image

...

The Horror Genre Is An Extremely Delicate Thing. You Can Talk To Filmmakers And Even Psychologists Who've Studied The Genre, And Even They Don't Understand What Works Or What Doesn't Work. More Importantly, They Don't Understand Why It Works When It Works.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Horror Genre Is

Stephen King

...

The Horror Genre Is An Extremely Delicate Thing. You Can Talk To Filmmakers And Even Psychologists Who've Studied The Genre, And Even They Don't Understand What Works Or What Doesn't Work. More Importantly, They Don't Understand Why It Works When It Works.

Views: 10

Topic

Delicate Things

More From Stephen King

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

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.

Humans Were Built To Look Back; That's Why We Have That Swivel Joint In Our Necks

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.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

They Were Nice Enough People And All, But There Wasn't Much Love In Them. Because They Were Too Busy Being Afraid. Love Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where There Was Only Fear, Just As Plants Didn't Grow Very Well In A Place Where It Was Always Dark.

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.

Don't Give Me What I Ask For, Give Me What I Need.

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

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."

He Realized Now That A Lot Of The Problem Had Been His Own Mind, Which Was Usually Moving At A Speed Ten Or Twenty Times That Of His Classmates. They Had Thought Him Strange, Weird, Or Even Suicidal, Depending On The Escapade In Question, But Maybe It Had Been A Simple Case Of Mental Overdrive-if Anything About Being In Constant Mental Overdrive Was Simple. Anyway, It Was The Sort Of Thing You Got Under Control After A While-you Got It Under Control Or You Found Outlets For It.

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.

Your First Impulse Is To Share Good News, Your Second Is To Club Someone With It.

True Love, Like Any Other Strong And Addicting Drug, Is Boring — Once The Tale Of Encounter And Discovery Is Told, Kisses Quickly Grow Stale And Caresses Tiresome… Except, Of Course, To Those Who Share The Kisses, Who Give And Take The Caresses While Every Sound And Color Of The World Seems To Deepen And Brighten Around Them. As With Any Other Strong Drug, True First Love Is Really Only Interesting To Those Who Have Become Its Prisoners. And, As Is True Of Any Other Strong And Addicting Drug, True First Love Is Dangerous.

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

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.

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.

It's Up To Men To Build Things ... It's Up To God To Blow Them Down.

Just Go On Dancing With Me Like This Forever And I'll Never Tire. We'll Scrape Our Shoe On The Stars And Hang Upside Down From The Moon.

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."

If Life Teaches Anything At All It Teaches That There Are So Many Happy Endings That The Man Who Believes That There Is No God Needs His Rationality Called Into Serious Question.

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.

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).

Politics Always Change. Stories Never Do.

A Woman Who Would Steal Your Love When Your Love Was Really All You Had To Give Was Not Much Of A Woman.

Sometimes An Accident Can Be An Unhappy Womans Best Friend

There Had Never Been A Shortage Of Fools In The World

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

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)

Nora Roberts Is Cool.

...writing Fiction...is No Job For Intellectual Cowards.

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

The Idea That Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time.

Make-up Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

It's A Hard Life If You Don't Weaken.

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.

Good Days And Long Nights To Ya, Sai.

The Thought Process Can Never Be Complete Without Articulation.

People With A High Tolerance For Boredom Can Get A Lot Of Thinking Done.

When Facts Speak, The Wise Man Listens.

And Poets, In My View, And I Think The View Of Most People, Do Speak God's Language - It's Better, It's Finer, It's Language On A Higher Plane Than Ordinary People Speak In Their Daily Lives.

Maybe There's A Whole Other Universe Where A Square Moon Rises In The Sky, And The Stars Laugh In Cold Voices, And Some Of The Triangles Have Four Sides, And Some Have Five, And Some Have Five Raised To The Fifth Power Of Sides. In This Universe There Might Grow Roses Which Sing. Everything Leads To Everything.

You Can't Be Careful On A Skateboard.

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

Some Of This Book—perhaps Too Much—has Been About How I Learned To Do It. Much Of It Has Been About How You Can Do It Better. The Rest Of It—and Perhaps The Best Of It—is A Permission Slip: You Can, You Should, And If You're Brave Enough To Start, You Will. Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

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.

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

The Boat Dipped And Swayed And Sometimes Took On Water, But It Did Not Sink; The Two Brothers Had Waterproofed It Well. I Do Not Know Where It Finally Fetched Up, If It Ever Did; Perhaps It Reached The Sea And Sails There Forever, Like A Magic Boat In A Fairytale. All I Know Is That It Was Still Afloat And Still Running On The Breast Of The Flood When It Passed The Incorporated Town Limits Of Derry, Maine, And There It Passes Out Of This Tale Forever.

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

You Needn't Die Happy When Your Time Comes, But You Must Die Satisfied, For You Have Lived Your Life From The Beginning To The End And Ka Is Always Served.

When All Else Fails, Give Up And Go To The Library.

I'm Going To Be Dead For A Long Time, So I Have A Lot To Do Now.

Don't Look Back, Never Look Back. How Often Do People Tell Themselves That After An Experience That Is Exceptionally Good (or Exceptionally Bad?)? Often, I Suppose. And The Advice Usually Goes Unheeded. Humans Were Built To Look Back; That's Why We Have Tat Swivel Joint In Our Necks.

You Know What Talent Is? The Curse Of Expectation. As A Kid You Have To Deal With That, Beat It Somehow. If You Can Write, You Think God Put You On Earth To Blow Shakespeare Away. Or If You Can Paint, Maybe You Think--i Did--that God Put You On Earth To Blow Your Father Away.

This Was The Darker Life, Where Every Truth Was Written Backward.

Do They See The Lethal Insanity Of A Race To The Brink Of Oblivion, And Then Over The Edge? Apparently Not. If They Did, Surely They Wouldn't Be Racing To Begin With. Or Is It A Simple Failure Of Imagination? One Doesn't Like To Think Such A Rudimentary Failing Could Bring About The End, Yet...

All Thing Serve The Beam

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.

Any Parting Could Be Forever, And We Don't Know.

Sure, We Need The Gypsies. We Always Have. Because If You Don't Have Someone To Run Out Of Town Once In A While, How Are You Going To Know You Yourself Belong There?

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

When Asked, 'how Do You Write?' I Invariably Answer, 'one Word At A Time.'

You Will Not Falter, Because You Will Have The Everlasting Arm Of The Lord God Of Hosts To Lean On. Yes. With God’s Help You Will Stand.

He Removed His Unvaluable Valuables And Dumped His Shirt, Pants, And Skivvies Into A Letter Slot.

I'm A Slow Reader, But I Usually Get Through Seventy Or Eighty Books A Year, Most Fiction. I Don't Read In Order To Study The Craft; I Read Because I Like To Read

I've Spent My Whole Life Doing Some Things Because They Were Logical And Not Doing Others Because They Were Not. I've Seen What Happens When People Act On Intuition, Or For Illogical Reasons. Sometimes The Results Are Ludicrous And Embarrassing; More Often They Are Simply Horrible. But Here I Am, Just The Same, Behaving Like A Crackbrained Crystal Gazer.

It's Time For The Wealthy To Pay Their Fair Share Before The Middle Class Becomes The Forgotten Class.- And It's Time For The Banks To Give Back What They Were Given. There Are Those In Politics, Particularly Those On The Conservative Side, Who Can't Get Enough Of Telling People That The Wealthy One Per Cent Must Not Be Taxed Because Doing So Kills Jobs. The Real Job-killers Are Corporate Greed And Political Expediency. It's Time For Working People In Maine And All Across The Country To Take Back The American Dream.

Until That Afternoon In October Four Years Ago, I Hadn't Known Dogs Could Scream.

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

A Dimwit Thinks Nothing Is Funny Unless It's Mean.

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.

Writing Is Seduction.

Remember That The Truth Is In The Details. No Matter How You See The World Or What Style It Imposes On Your Work As An Artist, The Truth Is In The Details. Of Course The Devil's There, Too-everyone Says So-but Maybe Truth And The Devil Are Words For The Same Thing. It Could Be You Know.

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—

I Believe In Evil, But All My Life I've Gone Back And Forth About Whether Or Not There's An Outside Evil, Whether Or Not There's A Force In The World That Really Wants To Destroy Us, From The Inside Out, Individually And Collectively.

When I Knew I Was Going To Be Able To Write Full Time, I Wondered, "what's Going To Happen To The Relationships Within My Family?" Are They Going To Change? Is It Going To Be The Kind Of Deal Where You Say, "i Can't Take This! Get Me Out Of Here! I Can't Stand These Screaming Kids!" The Way It Turned Out Was, I Was Able To Change The Diapers Okay, After I Stuck The Pin Through My Fingers A Few Times. I Had A Dawning Realization That Children Are Not Particularly Hard To Deal With.

Monsters Are Real, And Ghosts Are Real Too. They Live Inside Us, And Sometimes, They Win.

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

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

He Had Never Been A Social Man. He Had Shunned Causes With Contempt And Disgust. They Were For Pig-simple Suckers And People With Too Much Time And Money On Their Hands.

And Will I Tell You That These Three Lived Happily Ever After? I Will Not, For No One Ever Does. But There Was Happiness. And They Did Live.

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

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

Wendy? Darling? Light, Of My Life. I'm Not Gonna Hurt Ya. I'm Just Going To Bash Your Brains In.

Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Was Sitting One Day And Thinking About Cannibalism, Because That's What Guys Like Me Do... And I Thought, Suppose A Guy Was Washed Up On A Rocky Island, How Much Of Himself Could He Eat?

Listening To It Was Like Having A Mud-slimed Piece Of Silk Drawn Lightly Back And Forth Across Her Face.

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

Showrunning Is A Thing Where You Have To Work With Tons Of Different People. You Have To Schmooze People, You Have To Talk To Network People. I Don't Want To Do Any Of That.

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'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami.

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.

I Always Felt That Organized Religion Was Just Basically A Theological Insurance Scam Where They're Saying If You Spend Time With Us, Guess What, You're Going To Live Forever, You're Going To Go To Some Other Plain Where You're Going To Be So Happy, You'll Just Be Happy All The Time, Which Is Also Kind Of A Scary Idea To Me.

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

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

The Idea That The Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time. Substance Abusing Writers Are Just Substance Abusers — Common Garden Variety Drunks And Druggies, In Other Words. Any Claims That The Drugs And Alcohol Are Necessary To Dull A Finer Sensibility Are Just The Usual Self-serving Bullshit. I've Heard Alcoholic Snowplow Drivers Make The Same Claim, That They Drink To Still The Demons.

But It's Hard For A Man To Give Up All His Pleasures, Even When They Don't Pleasure Him No More.

Faith Is A Great Thing, And Really Religious People Would Like Us To Believe That Faith And Knowing Are The Same Thing, But I Don't Believe That Myself. Because There Are Too Many Different Ideas On The Subject. What We Know Is This: When We Die, One Of Two Things Happens. Either Our Souls And Thoughts Somehow Survive The Experience Of Dying Or They Don't. If They Do, That Opens Up Every Possibility You Could Think Of. If They Don't, It's Just Blotto. The End.

Homesickness Is Not Always A Vague, Nostalgic, Almost Beautiful Emotion, Although That Is Somehow The Way We Always Seem To Picture It In Our Mind. It Can Be A Terribly Keen Blade, Not Just A Sickness In Metaphor But In Fact As Well. It Can Change The Way One Looks At The World; The Faces One Sees In The Street Look Not Just Indifferent But Ugly... Perhaps Even Malignant. Homesickness Is A Real Sickness--the Ache Of The Uprooted Plant.

Definition Of A Wanderer: A Guy Who's Always Looking Beyond.

Dark Tower Series

The Loss Of Memory Isn't Always The Problem; Sometimes--maybe Even Often--it's The Solution.

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

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.

About Halfway Through I Broke Down Crying, Which I Hadn't Expected. I Was A Little Ashamed, But Only A Little;it Was Her, You See, And She Never Taxed Me With The Times That I Slipped From The Way I Thought A Man Should Be...the Way I Thought I Should Be, At Any Rate. A Man With A Good Wife Is The Luckiest Of God's Creatures, And One Without Must Be Among The Most Miserable, I Think, The Only True Blessing Of Their Lives That They Don't Know How Poorly Off They Are.

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

Advertising Tends To Be Most Effective In Jogging Finally Into Action Those People Who Are Well-enough Disposed Towards A Product, But Have Not Yet Got Around To Buying It.

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.

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

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.

You Can't Polish A Turd.

Life Turns On A Dime.

Life Was Such A Wheel That No Man Could Stand Upon It For Long. And It Always, At The End, Came Round To The Same Place Again.

I Watched Titanic When I Got Back Home From The Hospital, And Cried. I Knew That My Iq Had Been Damaged.

There Are, Occasionally, Writers Who Are Able To Combine Both Story And Style. They Are, Of Course, The Best. You Get A Spectacular View And You Also Get To Look At It From The Backseat Of A Chauffeur-driven Cadillac. In The Field Of Fantasy, Those Writers Able To Combine Story-as-narration With Story-as-style Are Even Rarer. But There Are A Few...the Late Theodore Sturgeon, The Early Ray Bradbury...and Richard Christian Matheson. A Brilliant Chip Off The Old Block.

I Do Have One Slightly Crooked Wheel Upstairs, But Everything Else Is Ticking Along Just Four-o, Thank You Very Much.

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.

Forced To Define 'irrational Subconscious,' I Would Say That It Is A Small Padded Room Inside All Of Us, Where The Only Furnishing Is A Small Card Table, And The Only Thing On The Card Table Is A Revolver Loaded With Flexible Bullets.

A Cowardly Leader Is The Most Dangerous Of Men.

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

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

The Things A Man Sees When He Ain't Got A Gun.--watson The Caretaker

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

Japanese Proverbs

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).

...book-buyers Aren't Attracted, By And Large, By The Literary Merits Of A Novel: Book-buyers Want A Good Story...something That Will First Fascinate Them, Then Pull Them In And Keep Them Turning The Pages.

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

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.

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.

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

And In Real Life Endings Aren't Always Neat, Whether They're Happy Endings, Or Whether They're Sad Endings.

The World Had Teeth And It Could Bite You With Them Anytime It Wanted.

We Lie Best When We Lie To Ourselves.

It's A Tough Life If You Don't Weaken.

There Came A Time When You Realized That Moving On Was Pointless. That You Took Yourself With You Wherever You Went.

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

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.

When It Comes To Rock Music, I'm Not Much Of A Player, But I Do Have Entry-level Chops. I'm More Knowledgeable As A Listener, And Revival Gave Me A Way To Write About Rock And Roll Without Being Preachy Or Boring.

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.

Do Any Of Us, Except In Our Dreams, Truly Expect To Be Reunited With Our Hearts' Deepest Loves, Even When They Leave Us Only For Minutes, And On The Most Mundane Of Errands? No, Not At All. Each Time They Go From Our Sight We In Our Secret Hearts Count Them As Dead. Having Been Given So Much, We Reason, How Could We Expect Not To Be Brought As Low As Lucifer For The Staggering Presumption Of Our Love?

Jake Went In, Aware That He Had, For The First Time In Three Weeks, Opened A Door Without Hoping Madly To Find Another World On The Other Side. A Bell Jingled Overhead. The Mild, Spicy Smell Of Old Books Hit Him, And The Smell Was Somehow Like Coming Home.

The Turtle Couldn't Help Us.

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.

There’s Always A Choice. That’s God’s Way, Always Will Be. Your Will Is Still Free. Do As You Will. There’s No Set Of Leg-irons On You. But... This Is What God Wants Of You.

The Scariest, Most Terrifying Thing That I Fear? Yes. My Imagination. I Thought You Were Going To Say "fear, Itself." Then You Have A Small Imagination.

I Wasn't A Social Drinker. I Used To Say That I Didn't Want To Go To Bars Because They Were Full Of Assholes Like Me.

The Good Thing About Being Old, Is You Don’t Have To Worry About Dying Young.

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?

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

A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

American Grammar Doesn't Have The Sturdiness Of British Grammar, But It Has Its Own Scruffy Charm.

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.

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

Death Is When The Monsters Get You.

...maybe The World Needs A Cadre Of Smartasses To Liven Things Up, Who Knows?

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

Writing Isn't About Making Money, Getting Famous, Getting Dates, Getting Laid, Or Making Friends. In The End, It's About Enriching The Lives Of Those Who Will Read Your Work, And Enriching Your Own Life, As Well. It's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

A Tragedy Is A Tragedy, And At The Bottom, All Tragedies Are Stupid. Give Me A Choice And I'll Take A Midsummer Night's Dream Over Hamlet Every Time. Any Fool With Steady Hands And A Working Set Of Lungs Can Build Up A House Of Cards And Then Blow It Down, But It Takes A Genius To Make People Laugh.

Fantasy Has A Better Chance Of Lasting Than A Lot Of Other Things. The Hobbit And The Narnia Books, They Seem To Get Handed Down Father To Son, Mother To Daughter. Because They're Set In A Fantasy World, They Can Remain Relevant.

I Think The Best Writers Are Voracious Readers Who Pick Up The Cadences And The Feel Of Narration Through A Number Of Different Books. And You Begin By Maybe Copying The Style Of Writers That Really Knocked You Out.

But I Think There Are A Set Of Experiences That Turn A Potential Writer Into A Working Writer, And Then There Are Places In Your Life Were You Start To Recognize What You Want To Do.

Places In Your Life

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

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.

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.

As For The End Of The Universe…i Say Let It Come As It Will, In Ice, Fire, Or Darkness. What Did The Universe Ever Do For Me That I Should Mind Its Welfare?

Has It Ever Occurred To You That Parents Are Nothing But Overgrown Kids Until Their Children Drag Them Into Adulthood? Usually Kicking And Screaming?

I Was In Enough To Get Along With People. I Was Never Socially Inarticulate. Not A Loner. And That Saved My Life, Saved My Sanity. That And The Writing. But To This Day I Distrust Anybody Who Thought School Was A Good Time. Anybody.

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

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

Keeping Secrets

Story Is Honorable And Trustworthy; Plot Is Shifty, And Best Kept Under House Arrest.

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

So Where Do The Ideas-the Salable Ideas-come From? They Come From My Nightmares. Not The Night-time Variety, As A Rule, But The Ones That Hide Just Beyond The Doorway That Separates The Conscious From The Unconscious.

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

Andy Dufresne: 'that's The Beauty Of Music. They Can't Get That From You...haven't You Ever Felt That Way About Music?' Red: 'i Played A Mean Harmonica As A Younger Man. Lost Interest In It Though. Didn't Make Much Sense In Here.' Andy: 'here's Where It Makes The Most Sense. You Need It So You Don't Forget.' Red: 'forget?' Andy: 'forget That...there Are Places In This World That Aren't Made Out Of Stone. That There's Something Inside...that They Can't Get To, That They Can't Touch. That's Yours.' Red: 'what're You Talking About?' Andy: 'hope.'

In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That’s What Wireman Says.

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.

There Are Lots Of Guys Out There Who Write A Better Prose Line Than I Do And Who Have A Better Understanding Of What People Are Really Like And What Humanity Is Supposed To Mean - Hell, I Know That.

To Me, The Greatest Thing In The World Is Downloading Tv Shows On Itunes Because There Are No Commercials, And Yet If I Were A Working Stiff, I Could Never Afford To Do This. But I Don't Even Think About Money.

The Person Healed Has An Obligation To Then Ask Why— To Meditate On God's Will, And The Extraordinary Lengths To Which God Has Gone To Realize His Will.

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.

Hurt's A Reason To Change, But All The Hurt In The World Don't Change Facts.

Every Marriage Has Two Hearts, One Light And One Dark

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.

I Work Until Beer O'clock.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

The Overlook Was Still Not Done With Him. Written On The Mirror, Not In Lipstick But In Blood, Was A Single Word: Redrum

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

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.

Trending Author

Jessica Mitford

Pierre Salinger

Alexander Skarsgard

Category