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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.

-Stephen King

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The Idea That The

Stephen King

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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.

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I Work Until Beer O'clock.

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.

A Person Could See A Lot Without Ever Leaving His Own Living Room. Especially If He Had The Right Tools.

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

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.

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).

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.

Do It For Joy And You Can Do It Forever

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.

There's A Saying - "write What You Know." It's Bad Advice If You Take It As An Unbreakable Rule, But Good Advice If You Use It As A Foundation.

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

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

What's Been Tried Once Had Been Tried Once Before... And Before... And Before...

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.

My Friend Wants To Get Moving And So Do I,' Eddie Said. 'we've Got Miles To Go Yet.' I Know That. It's On Your Face, Son. Like A Scar.' Eddie Was Fascinated By The Idea Of Duty And Ka As Something That Left A Mark, Something That Might Look Like Decoration To One Eye And Disfigurement To Another. Outside, Thunder Cracked And Lightning Flashed.

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

The Town Kept Its Secrets, And The Marsten House Brooded Over It Like A Ruined King.

I Love Crime, I Love Mysteries, And I Love Ghosts.

Constant Reading Will Pull You Into A Place - A Mind-set, If You Like The Phrase - Where You Can Write Eagerly And Without Self-consciousness.

Some Things It Don't Pay To Be Curious About.

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.

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

The Scariest Moment Is Always Just Before You Start.

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

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

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.

Love Among The Ruins... I'll Tell You Something, My Friend: Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

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

You Cannot Condemn A Man For What May Only Be A Figment Of Your Own Imagination.

Time Slowed And Reality Bent; On And On The Eggman Went.

All You Need To Do Is Hold On Tight...and Believe.

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

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.

Outlines Are The Last Resource Of Bad Fiction Writers Who Wish To God They Were Writing Masters' Theses.

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

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.

She Did Not Know If Her Gift Came From The Lord Of Light Or Of Darkness, And Now, Finally Finding That She Didn't Care Which, She Wad Overcome With Almost Indescribable Relief, As If A Huge Weight, Long Carried, Had Slipped From Her Shoulders.

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

If I Have To Spend Time In Purgatory Before Going To One Place Or The Other, I Guess I'll Be All Right As Long As There's A Lending Library.

Being Sorry For Myself Is A Luxury I Can't Afford.

...it Was More Like Bleeding Than Crying.

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

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.

We Have Once Again Succeeded In Destroying What We Could Not Create.

Did You Know That Dairy Queen Ice Cream Is Mostly Bubbles?

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

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.

Her Body Was Wrapped In Shadows Like Moth Wings, Like Rose-petals.

Legends Grow Beards, And Twenty-three Years Is Plenty Of Time To Grow A Long One.

Kids Absolutely Not Reading. I Think It's Because They're So Screen-oriented [tvs, Computers, Smartphones]. They Do Read - Girls In Particular Read A Lot. They Have A Tendency To Go Toward The Paranormal, Romances, Twilight And Stuff Like That. And Then It Starts To Taper Off Because Other Things Take Precedence, Like The Kardashian Sisters.

And Then Woe Is You, Pauly. Woe To The Max.

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

As With All Other Aspects Of Fiction, The Key To Writing Good Dialogue Is Honesty.

Ka Works And The World Moves On.

A Scary Movie Puts A Lot Of People, A Mob, In One Place. There Are Advantages To That Because The Panic Runs Through The Audience. If It's A Good Movie, The Fear Jumps From One Person To The Next. You Can Find Yourself Screaming Just Because Everybody Around You Is Screaming. There's A Real Atmosphere Of Terror. It's Also Visual, Which Means That You Can't Look Away From This Thing - It's Happening. You're In The Dark. It's Like A Nightmare. It's Like A Dream. It's Very, Very Visual. It Works On All Those Levels.

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.

I Can't See The Future, But It's Grim. The Depletion Of Resources - We're Living In This Dine-and-dash Economy.

I Have Never Felt Like I Was Creating Anything. For Me, Writing Is Like Walking Through A Desert And All At Once, Poking Up Through The Hardpan, I See The Top Of A Chimney. I Know There's A House Under There, And I'm Pretty Sure That I Can Dig It Up If I Want. That's How I Feel. It's Like The Stories Are Already There. What They Pay Me For Is The Leap Of Faith That Says: 'if I Sit Down And Do This, Everything Will Come Out Okay.'

Las Personas Con Un Alto Nivel De Tolerancia Al Aburrimiento Tienen Tiempo De Sobra Para Pensar.

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

Dark Tower Series

Was It Pretty? Your Country. . .your Land?" "it Was Beautiful," The Gunslinger Said. "there Were Fields And Forests And Rivers And Mists In The Morning. But That's Only Pretty. My Mother Used To Say That The Only Real Beauty Is Order And Love And Light.

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

Fantasy And Reality

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!

A Cloud-congested Caul That Is Alternately Red, Orange, Vermilion, Purple. Sometimes The Clouds Break Apart In Great, Slow Rafts, Letting Through Beams Of Innocent Yellow Sunlight That Are Bitterly Nostalgic For The Summer That Has Gone By.

She Felt Like Someone Who Drowns Remembering What It Was Like To Still Be On The Boat, So Calm And At Ease, So Carelessly Safe

Roland Had Taught Him That Self-deception Was Nothing But Pride In Disguise, An Indulgence To Be Denied.

Money Means I Can Support My Family And Still Do What I Love. Not Very Many People Can Say That In This World, And Not Many Writers Can Say That.

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

I Know Your Mother Lives In Your Head - Almost Everyone's Mother Does, I Guess - But You Can't Let Her Have Her Way On This One

I Don't Want To Just Mess With Your Head. I Want To Mess With Your Life.... I Want You To Miss Appointments, Burn Dinner, Skip Your Homework. I Want You To Tell Your Wife To Take That Moonlight Stroll On The Beach At Waikiki With The Resort Tennis Pro While You Read A Few More Chapters.

Where The World Ends Is Where You Must Begin

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

Formula: Second Draft = First Draft Minus 10%.

I Believe There Is An Unseen World All Around Us.

I Don't Want You To Apologize For Being Rich; I Want You To Acknowledge That In America, We All Should Have To Pay Our Fair Share.

I Think Part Of Being A Parent Is Trying To Kill Your Kids.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

Stories Are Artifacts, Not Really Made Things Which We Create And Can Take Credit For, But Pre-existing Objects Which We Dig Up.

Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

And Now, All These Years Later, It Seem To Him That The Most Horrible Fact Of Human Existence Was That Broken Hearts Mended

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

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

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 Can't Laugh When Things Go Bad--laugh And Put On A Little Carnival--then You're Either Dead Or Wishing You Were.

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

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

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.

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. I'll Love Your Face No Matter What It Looks Like. Because It's Yours.

How Life Did Imitate Art Sometimes. And The Cruder The Art, The Closer The Imitation.

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.

When People Begin To Lose Hope, There's Bound To Be Explosions.

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.

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

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.

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

Writing Is Not Life, But I Think That Sometimes It Can Be A Way Back To Life.

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

Good Books Don't Give Up All Their Secrets At Once.

Fear Stands For Face Everything And Recover – Old Aa Saying

Animals Don't Know As Much About Jealousy As People, But They're Not Ignorant Of It, Either.

I've Killed Enough Of The World's Trees.

How Do We Remember To Remember? That's A Question I've Asked Myself Often Since My Time On Duma Key, Often In The Small Hours Of The Morning, Looking Up Into The Absence Of Light, Remembering Absent Friends. Sometimes In Those Little Hours I Think About The Horizon. You Have To Establish The Horizon. You Have To Mark The White. A Simple Enough Act, You Might Say, But Any Act That Re-makes The World Is Heroic. Or So I've Come To Believe.

Good Writing Is Often About Letting Go Of Fear And Affectation. Affectation Itself, Beginning With The Need To Define Some Sorts Of Writing As 'good' And Other Sorts As 'bad' Is Fearful Behavior.

I Just Didn't Want Her To Get Hurt. I Thought She Was Going To Be. But Everyone Gets Their Share, Don't They? Sure. Pow, In The Nose. Pow, In The Eye. Pow, Below The Belt, Down You Go, And The Ref Just Went Out For A Hot Dog.

When Creative People Do Their Best Work, They're Hardly Ever In Charge, They're Just Sort Of Rolling Along With Their Eyes Shut Yelling Wheee.

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

It's "merry Christmas" At Our House. Whatever It Is At Yours, Have A Happy One. And Be Good To Somebody.

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

A Hurt Body And Mind Aren't Just Like A Dictatorship; They Are A Dictatorship. There Is No Tyrant As Merciless As Pain, No Despot So Cruel As Confusion.

If Something Is Accessible To A Lot Of People, It's Got To Be Dumb Because Most People Are Dumb.

And So Will The World End, I Think, A Victim Of Love Rather Than Hate. For Love's Ever Been The More Destructive Weapon, Sure.

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

Politics Always Change. Stories Never Do.

Writing Is Seduction.

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.

I Love Music, And I Can Play A Little. But Anyone Can See The Difference Between Someone Who's Talented And Someone That's Not.

I Am The Literary Equivalent Of A Big Mac And Fries.

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

If Anyone Ever Asks You What Panic Is, Now You Can Tell Them: An Emotional Blank Spot That Leaves You Feeling As If You've Been Sucking On A Mouthful Of Pennies.

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

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 Have An Idea Of How The Book Will Finish Up, But It Very Rarely Finishes Up The Way That I Think It's Going To.

Any Game Looks Straight If Everyone Is Being Cheated At Once.

Wherever You Write Is Supposed To Be A Little Bit Of A Refuge, A Place Where You Can Get Away From The World. The More Closed In You Are, The More You're Forced Back On Your Own Imagination.

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.

Tell Him He's Wrong. Tell Him That Even If He's Right About Waiting, He's Right For The Wrong Reasons, And That Makes Him All The Way Wrong.

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

The Stories We Hear In Our Childhood Are The Ones We Remember All Our Lives.

Even When Love Isn't Enough...somehow It Is.

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

Procrastination

Carrie Was A Terrific Piece Of Work. At The End Of The Movie Comes, When Amy Irving Kneels Down To Put The Flowers On Carrie's Grave, A Hand Comes Up Through The Grave And Seizes Her By The Arm. The Audience Went To The Roof, Totally To The Roof. It Was Just The Most Amazing Reaction. And I Thought, 'we Have A Monster Hit On Our Hands. Brian De Palma Has Done Something New. He's Actually Created A Shock Ending That Shocks An Audience That Was Ready For A Horror Film.' And There Were Several People Who Did It After That.

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.

It Was The Kiss By Which All The Others Of His Life Would Be Judged And Found Wanting.

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.

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 Best Show On Television Is Red Sox Baseball. Everything Else Sucks.

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.

The Book Is Not The Important Part. The Book Is The Delivery System. The Important Part Is The Story And The Talent.

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.

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.

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

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Even Despair - The Sense That You Can Never Completely Put On The Page What's In Your Mind And Heart. You Can Come To The Act With Your Fists Clenched And Your Eyes Narrowed, Ready To Kick Ass And Take Down Names. You Can Come To It Because You Want A Girl To Marry You Or Because You Want To Change The World. Come To It Any Way But Lightly. Let Me Say It Again: You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

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.

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

Language Does Not Always Have To Wear A Tie And Lace-up Shoes.

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

I Don't Ask Myself, "well, Does God Exist Or Does God Not Exist?" I Choose To Believe That God Exists, And Therefore I Can Say, "god, I Can't Do This By Myself. Help Me Not To Take A Drink Today. Help Me Not To Take A Drug Today." And That Works Fine For Me.

But Now The Joy Is Gone And The Sadness Is Back, The Sadness Feels Like Something Deserved, The Price Of Some Not-quite-forgotten Betrayal.

I Win, You Win. You Win, I Win. The Gun, I Win. The Fruit, You Win. I Win, You Win.

I Think It's Relatively Easy For People To Accept Something Like Telepathy Or Precognition Or Teleplasm Because Their Willingness To Believe Doesn't Cost Them Anything. It Doesn't Keep Them Awake Nights. But The Idea That The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them Is Unsettling.

Life Is Fair. We All Get The Same Nine-month Shake In The Box, And Then The Dice Roll. Some People Get A Run Of Sevens. Some People, Unfortunately, Get Snake-eyes. Its Just How The World Is.

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

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.

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!

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.

The Brain Is A Muscle That Can Move The World.

The Idea For A Novel Is Like A Little Tiny Fire In A Dark Night. And, One By One, The Characters Come And Stand Around It And Warm Their Hands.

The First Real Terror Struck Him Then, And There Was Nothing Supernatural About It. It Was Only A Realization Of How Easy It Was To Trash Your Life. That Was What Was So Scary. You Just Dragged The Fan Up To Everything You Had Spent The Years Raking Together And Turned The Motherfucker On.

Teaching School Is Like Having Jumper Cables Hooked To Your Brain, Draining All The Juice Out Of You.

Sooner Or Later Everything You Thought You'd Left Behind Comes Around Again. For Good Or Ill, It Comes Around Again.

Sooner Or Later

Want A Coke?” Abra Asked. “sugar Solves Lots Of Problems, That’s What I Think.

Everyone Loves Something For Nothing...even If It Costs Everything.

A Kid Of Your Age---any Kid---could Get Hold Of Matches If She Wanted To, Burn Up The House Or Whatever. But Not Many Do. Why Would They Want To?

The Cumulative Power Of Doing Things The Same Way Every Day Seems To Be A Way Of Saying To The Mind: You're Going To Be Dreaming Soon.

Memories Are Contrary Things; If You Quit Chasing Them And Turn Your Back, They Often Return On Their Own.

Language Does Not Always Have To Wear A Tie And Lace-up Shoes. The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story... To Make Him/her Forget, Whenever Possible, That He/she Is Reading A Story At All.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

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."

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.

If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

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

May You Find Your Tower, Roland, And Breach It, And May You Climb To The Top!

There Seems To Be No Air In The Air She Breaths.

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

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.

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.

People Want To Know Why I Do This, Why I Write Such Gross Stuff. I Like To Tell Them I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy... And I Keep It In A Jar On My Desk.

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.

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.

The Simple Truth Of Things Is That Bad Dreams Are Far Better Than Bad Wakings.

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

C-c-can You Get Bones In Your Buh-buh-brain?' Bill Asked. This Was Turning Into The Most Interesting Conversation He'd Had In Weeks.

Interesting Conversation

"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."

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.

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.

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.

The Wind Makes You Ache Is Some Place That Is Deeper Than Your Bones. It May Be That It Touches Something Old In The Human Soul, A Chord Of Race Memory That Says Migrate Or Die - Migrate Or Die.

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.

The First Movie I Can Remember Seeing Was The Creature From The Black Lagoon. And, I Can Remember Hearing A Radio Play Of Ray Bradbury's Mars Is Heaven. And When I Cut My Teeth On Comic Books, They Were Not The Easy Ones Of Today Like Spiderman, Superman And The Hulk. They Were Tales Of The Crypt, The Vaultkeeper, And That Sort Of Thing.

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

I'll See You.' He Grinned. 'not If I See You First.

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.

We Are Going To Fight. We Are Going To Be Hurt. And In The End, We Will Stand.

She Can't Help It,' He Said. 'she's Got The Soul Of A Poet And The Emotional Makeup Of A Junkyard Dog.

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

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

Part Of My Function As A Writer Is To Dream Awake. And That Usually Happens. If I Sit Down To Write In The Morning, In The Beginning Of That Writing Session And The Ending Of That Session, I'm Aware That I'm Writing. I'm Aware Of My Surroundings. It's Like Shallow Sleep On Both Ends, When You Go To Bed And When You Wake Up. But In The Middle, The World Is Gone And I'm Able To See Better.

If I Can Get It Down On Paper Without Puking All Over The Word Processor, Then As Far As I'm Concerned, It's Fit To See The Light Of Day.

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...

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Michael Fassbender

John Buchanan Robinson

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