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The Important Question Has Nothing To Do With Whether The Talk In Your Story Is Sacred Or Profane; The Only Question Is How It Rings On The Page And In Your Ear. If You Expect It To Ring True, Then You Must Talk Yourself. Even More Important, You Must Shut Up And Listen To Others Talk.

-Stephen King

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The Important Question Has

Stephen King

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The Important Question Has Nothing To Do With Whether The Talk In Your Story Is Sacred Or Profane; The Only Question Is How It Rings On The Page And In Your Ear. If You Expect It To Ring True, Then You Must Talk Yourself. Even More Important, You Must Shut Up And Listen To Others Talk.

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Falling In Love

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

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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).

I Dreamed Of You. I Dreamed You Were Wandering In The Dark, And So Was I. We Found Each Other. We Found Each Other In The Dark.

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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.

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Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

Once Again There Was The Desert, And That Only.

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.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

Silent White Light Filled The World. And The Righteous And Unrighteous Alike Were Consumed In That Holy Fire.

I Don't Want To Sound Like An Ad, A Public Service Ad On Tv, But The Fact Is If You Can Read, You Can Walk Into A Job Later On. If You Don't, Then You've Got, The Army, Iraq, I Don't Know, Something Like That. It's, It's Not As Bright. So, That's My Little Commercial For That.

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Never Give A Good Politician Time To Pray.

He Found Himself Still With Too Many Questions And Not Enough Answers.

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.

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I Think That We're All Mentally Ill. Those Of Us Outside The Asylums Only Hide It A Little Better - And Maybe Not All That Much Better After All.

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

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?

I Don't Take Notes; I Don't Outline, I Don't Do Anything Like That. I Just Flail Away At The Goddamn Thing. I'm A Salami Writer. I Try To Write Good Salami, But Salami Is Salami. You Can't Sell It As Caviar.

The Brain Is A Muscle That Can Move The World.

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

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.

When You Write, You Want To Get Rid Of The World, Don’t You? Of Course You Do. When You’re Writing, You’re Creating Your Own Worlds.

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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.

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.

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.

As A Rule, I Don't Worry About Genre. I Just Want To Tell A Good Story, With Characters That Interest Me And My Readers.

It Wasn't Just Love That Held People Together. There Was Secrets, And The Price You Paid To Keep Them.

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.

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!

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.

Long Days And Pleasant Nights

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

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

And Didn't They Say That, Although Curiosity Killed The Cat, Satisfaction Brought The Beast Back?

So What, Ghosts Can't Hurt You. That's What I Thought Then.

Dreams Age Faster Than Dreamers.

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

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

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

Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

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

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

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

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.

There's Something In Us That Is Very Much Attracted To Madness. Everyone Who Looks Off The Edge Of A Tall Building Has Felt At Least A Faint, Morbid Urge To Jump. And Anyone Who Has Ever Put A Loaded Pistol Up To His Head... All Right, My Point Is This: Even The Most Well-adjusted Person Is Holding Onto His Or Her Sanity By A Greased Rope. I Really Believe That. The Rationality Circuits Are Shoddily Built Into The Human Animal.

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.

To Write Is Human, To Edit Is Divine.

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

Upon Being Asked By A Fan How To Become A Writer, Stephen King Replied, "write.

There's Nothing As Human As Hunger. There's No Creation Without Talent, I Give You That, But Talent Is Cheap. Talent Goes Begging. Hunger Is The Piston Of Art.

Man Has Come To Dominate The Planet Thanks To Two Essential Traits. One Is Intelligence. The Other Has Been The Absolute Willingness To Kill Anyone And Anything That Gets In His Way.

The Story Is The Only Thing That's Important. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself. It's Like What Bowlers Say. You Hear Writers Talk About Character Or Theme Or Mood Or Mode Or Tense Or Person. But Bowlers Say, If You Make The Spares, The Strikes Will Take Care Of Themselves. If You Can Tell A Story, Everything Else Becomes Possible. But Without Story, Nothing Is Possible, Because Nobody Wants To Hear About Your Sensitive Characters If There's Nothing Happening In The Story. And The Same Is True With Mood. Story Is The Only Thing That's Important.

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?

Everyone Needs A Hobby, He Said. And Everyone Needs A Miracle Or Two, Just To Prove Life Is More Than Just One Long Trudge From The Cradle To The Grave.

It's Like Many Other Things In Life, Ellie. You Keep On The Path And All's Well. You Get Off It And The Next Thing You Know You're Lost If You're Not Lucky.

It Didn´t Occur To Me Until Later That There´s Another Truth, Very Simple: Greed In A Good Cause Is Still Greed.

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.

What Do You Really Want To Know? Am I Sorry For What I Did? There's Not A Day Goes By I Don't Feel Regret. Not Because I'm In Here, But Because You Think I Should Be. I Look Back On The Way I Was. A Young, Stupid Kid That Committed That Terrible Crime. I Want To Talk To Him. I Want To Try To Talk Some Sense To Him. Tell Him The Way Things Are. But I Can't. That Kid's Long Gone, And This Old Man Is All That's Left.

And People Who Don’t Dream, Who Don’t Have Any Kind Of Imaginative Life, They Must… They Must Go Nuts. I Can’t Imagine That.

Of Course They Had More Chains On Him Than Scrooge Saw On Marley's Ghost, But He Could Have Kicked Up Dickens If He'd Wanted. That's A Pun, Son.

Ninety-five Percent Of People Who Walk The Earth Are Simply Inert. One Percent Are Saints, And One Percent Are Assholes. The Other Three Percent Are People Who Do What They Say They Can Do.

For A Moment He Felt A Wild Hope: Perhaps This Really Was A Nightmare. Perhaps He Would Awake In His Own Bed, Bathed In Sweat, Shaking, Maybe Even Crying . . . But Alive. Safe. Then He Pushed The Thought Away. Its Charm Was Deadly, Its Comfort Fatal.

A Little Arrogance (or Even A Lot) Isn't Such A Bad Thing, Although Your Mother Undoubtedly Told You Different. Mine Did. "pride Goeth Before A Fall, Stephen", She Said... And Then I Found Out - Right Around The Age That Is 19 X 2 - That Eventually You Fall Down, Anyway.

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

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

Isn't It Too Bad That The Great Truths Are All Such Lies.

Every Religion Lies. Every Moral Precept Is A Delusion. Even The Stars Are A Mirage. The Truth Is Darkness, And The Only Thing That Matters Is Making A Statement Before One Enters It. Cutting The Skin Of The World And Leaving A Scar. That's All History Is, After All: Scar Tissue.

A Product Can Be Quickly Outdated, But A Successful Brand Is Timeless.

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

I Can Remember As A College Student Writing Stories And Novels, Some Of Which Ended Up Getting Published And Some That Didn't. It Was Like My Head Was Going To Burst - There Were So Many Things I Wanted To Write All At Once. I Had So Many Ideas, Jammed Up. It Was Like They Just Needed Permission To Come Out.

Did It [cocaine] For About Eight Years. Not A Terribly Long Time To Be An Addict I Guess, But It Is Longer Than World War Ii.

I Go Where The Story Leads. And, Sometimes, It Is A Little Bit Outrageous. And I Relish That. I Sort Of Want To Be As Much On The Edge As I Can.

It Don't Matter If You Believe In God Nick, He Believes In You.

They're Animals, All Right. But Why Are You So Goddam Sure That Makes Us Human Beings?

You Can Go Through Your Whole Life Telling Yourself That Life Is Logical, Life Is Prosaic, Life Is Sane. Above All Sane. And I Think It Is. I've Had A Lot Of Time To Think About That. And What I Keep Coming Back To Is [her] Dying Declaration: 'so You Understand That When We Increase The Number Of Variables, The Axioms Themselves Never Change.'

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

Thought Provoking

People Think First Love Is Sweet, And Never Sweeter Than When That First Bond Snaps. You've Heard A Thousand Pop And Country Songs That Prove The Point; Some Fool Got His Heart Broke. Yet That First Broken Heart Is Always The Most Painful, The Slowest To Mend, And Leaves The Most Visible Scar. What's So Sweet About That?

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.

I Believe That The Combination Of Pencil And Memory Creates A Kind Of Practical Magic, And Magic Is Dangerous.

Our Time Here Is Brief, Our Risk Enormous. Don't Waste The One Or Increase The Other, If You Please.

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

Life Turns On A Dime.

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

Some Guys-a Lot Of Guys-don't Believe What They Are Seeing, Especially If It Gets In The Way Of What They Want To Eat Or Drink Or Believe. Me, I Don't Believe In God. But If I Saw Him, I Would. I Wouldn't Just Go Around Saying, "jesus, That Was A Great Special Effect." The Definition Of An Asshole Is A Guy Who Doesn't Believe What He's Seeing.

Horror Movies Often Work Better When We Have A Stake In The Game. The More We Care About The Characters, The More Human They Are To Us, The More Appealing They Are To Us And The More Effective The Horror Tends To Be.

For Most Of Us, I Think It's Easier To Admit Doing Wrong Than Being Stupid.

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

When A Good Writer Is Having Fun, The Audience Is Almost Always Having Fun Too.

Anywhere In New York, Anywhere In The Country, Somewhere There's Going To Be A Coke Sign. People Identify With Coke. You Can Write A Novel About New York And People From The Country Will Read It If They Feel That You've Made Them Familiar With New York.

A Person Who Doesn't Learn From The Past Is An Idiot, In My Estimation.

I Would Say Plotting Is The Most Difficult Thing For Me. Characterization Is Only Hard Because Sometimes I Feel I Get So Interested In It That I Want To Talk Too Much About The Characters And That Slows The Story Down. So I Say, "hey, People Want To Find Out What's Going To Happen Next, They Don't Want To Listen To You Spout Off About This Or That Person." But I Think Even The Bad Guy Deserves To Tell His Side Of The Story.

It Occured To Her That Pleasure, No Matter How Deep, Was A Ghostly, Ephemeral Thing. Love Might Make The World Go Round, But She Was Convinced It Ws The Cries Of The Badly Wounded Andf Deeply Afflicted Which Spun The Universe On The Great Glass Pole Of It's Axis.

I'm Rightly Tired Of The Pain I Hear And Feel, Boss. I'm Tired Of Bein On The Road, Lonely As A Robin In The Rain. Not Never Havin No Buddy To Go On With Or Tell Me Where We's Comin From Or Goin To Or Why. I'm Tired Of People Bein Ugly To Each Other. It Feels Like Pieces Of Glass In My Head. I'm Tired Of All The Times I've Wanted To Help And Couldn't. I'm Tired Of Bein In The Dark. Mostly It's The Pain. There's Too Much. If I Could End It, I Would. But I Can't.

Until We See Each Other Again, Keep Your Head Together, Read Some Good Books, Be Useful, Be Happy.

Women's Lib, Frannie Had Decided, Was Nothing More Nor Less Than An Outgrowth Of The Technological Society. Women Were At The Mercy Of Their Bodies. They Were Smaller. They Tended To Be Weaker. A Man Couldn't Get With Child, But A Woman Could---every Four-year-old Knows It. And A Pregnant Woman Is A Vulnerable Human Being. Civilization Had Provided An Umbrella Of Sanity That Both Sexes Could Stand Beneath.

Alone. Yes, That's The Key Word, The Most Awful Word In The English Tongue. Murder Doesn't Hold A Candle To It And Hell Is Only A Poor Synonym.

Beating Heroin Is Child's Play Compared To Beating Your Childhood.

The Monster Nevers Dies.

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