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There Are Books Full Of Great Writing That Don't Have Very Good Stories. Read Sometimes For The Story... Don't Be Like The Book-snobs Who Won't Do That. Read Sometimes For The Words--the Language. Don't Be Like The Play-it-safers Who Won't Do That. But When You Find A Book That Has Both A Good Story And Good Words, Treasure That Book.

-Stephen King

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There Are Books Full

Stephen King

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There Are Books Full Of Great Writing That Don't Have Very Good Stories. Read Sometimes For The Story... Don't Be Like The Book-snobs Who Won't Do That. Read Sometimes For The Words--the Language. Don't Be Like The Play-it-safers Who Won't Do That. But When You Find A Book That Has Both A Good Story And Good Words, Treasure That Book.

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

Whenever I Publish A Book, I Feel Like A Trapper Caught By The Iroquois. They're All Lined Up With Tomahawks, And The Idea Is To Run Through With Your Head Down, And Everybody Gets To Take A Swing. They Hit You In The Head, The Back, The Ass, And The Balls.

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

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

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

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

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Parenting Because I'm Home. A Friend Of Mine Told Me That The Average Father Sees Each Kid An Average Of Twenty-two Minutes A Week, Which I Found Almost Unbelievable. Mine Are In My Hip Pocket All The Time. And I Like It That Way.

In Polite Society, We Call Our Obsessions Hobbies.

My Heart's With You, Bill, No Matter How It Turns Out. My Heart Is With All Of Them, And I Think That, Even If We Forget Each Other, We'll Remember In Our Dreams.

Well, I'm Like A Drug Addict, I'm Always Saying I'm Going To Stop, And Then I Don't, What I've Said Consistently Is That I Hope I Know When To Stop: When It Starts To Get Repetitive.

If You Say, Well, Ok, I Don't Believe In God. There's No Evidence Of God, Then You're Missing The Stars In The Sky And You're Missing The Sunrises And Sunsets And You're Missing The Fact That Bees Pollinate All These Crops And Keep Us Alive And The Way That Everything Seems To Work Together. Everything Is Sort Of Built In A Way That To Me Suggests Intelligent Design.

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

It Might Be That The Biggest Division In The World Isn't Men And Women But Folks Who Like Cats And Folks Who Like Dogs" - (l.t.'s Theory Of Pets)

Memory Is The Basis Of Every Journey.

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.

The Essential And Defining Characteristic Of Childhood Is Not The Effortless Merging Of Dream And Reality, But Only Alienation. There Are No Words For Childhood's Dark Turns And Exhalations. A Wise Child Recognizes It And Submits To The Necessary Consequences. A Child Who Counts The Cost Is A Child No Longer.

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

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.

Make-up Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

What Happens To The Wide-eyed Observer When The Window Between Reality And Unreality Breaks And The Glass Begins To Fly?

Let's Face It. No Kid In High School Feels As Though They Fit In.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

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.

Never's The Word God Listens For When He Needs A Laugh.

The Only Wat To Get Better At Writing Is To Write. And Read.

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.

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

I Write About Rats Because They Scare The Hell Out Of Me. I Think We Tend To Write Out Our Phobias.

The Only Religions I Don't Like Are The Ones That Insist Their God Is Bigger Than Your God.

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.

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

True Friendship

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.

All I Ask Is That You Do As Well As You Can, And Remember That, While To Write Adverbs Is Human, To Write He Said Or She Said Is Divine.

She Looks Like The Type That Might Freak Out. It's Something In The Eyes, Frannie. It Says If You Shoot My Sacred Cows, I'll Shoot Yours.

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.

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

You Discarded Most Of The Lies Along The Way But Held On To The One That Said Life Mattered.

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

It's Hard Enough For A Person To Keep Their Own Socks Pulled Up, Let Alone Someone Else's.

Doubters Will Doubt To The End.

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

You Should Never Trust A Person Who Prays In Public.

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.

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.

This Is A Short Book Because Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit.

Kids Know They Can't Make It Alone, Yet At The Same Time, Built Into Each One Of Us, Is A Survival Ethic. It Says, "nobody Cares And You Have To Look Out For Yourself And If You Don't, You'll Die." These Two Things Work Against Each Other. I Think Most Kids Are Very Frightened Of Their Parents, And That's What All Fairy Tales Reflect: Parents Will Fail You And You'll Be Left On Your Own. But, Of Course, Everything Comes Out Right In The End And The Parents Take You Back.

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

But You Don't Do It. Because Guys Like Us, Red, We Know There's A Third Choice. An Alternative To Staying Simon-pure Or Bathing In The Filth And The Slime. It's The Alternative That Grown-ups All Over The World Pick. You Balance Off Your Walk Through The Hog-wallow Against What It Gains You. You Choose The Lesser Of Two Evils And Try To Keep Your Good Intentions In Front Of You. And I Guess You Judge How Well You're Doing By How Well You Sleep At Night... And What Your Dreams Are Like.

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

My Feeling Of The Whole Genre, Of The Terror Tale, Is This: The Best Thing That You Can Do For The Readers In This Field Is To Terrify Them. It Is Something That Is Intellectual, It Happens In Your Mind.

So What He Supposed To Do? Grab Bobbie's Ax And Make Like Jack Nicholson In The Shinning? He Could See It. Smash, Crash, Bash: Heeeeeeere's Gardener!

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?

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.

I’m Convinced That Fear Is At The Root Of Most Bad Writing. Dumbo Got Airborne With The Help Of A Magic Feather; You May Feel The Urge To Grasp A Passive Verb Or One Of Those Nasty Adverbs For The Same Reason. Just Remember Before You Do That Dumbo Didn’t Need The Feather; The Magic Was In Him.

Working On A New Idea Is Kind Of Like Getting Married. Then A New Idea Comes Along And You Think, 'man, I'd Really Like To Go Out With Her.' But You Can't. At Least Not Until The Old Idea Is Finished.

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

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

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.

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

The Quiet, Singing Voice Of The Rose. The Song That Promised All Might Be Well, All Might Be Well, That All Manner Of Things Might Be Well.

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

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?

The Soil Of A Man’s Heart Is Stonier; A Man Grows What He Can And Tends It.

I Like To Write Short Stories More Because I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy. And A Short Story Is, By Its Very Definition, Short. It Is Something That Generally You Can Turn Out In A Week To Two Weeks Depending On How Well It Goes For You. But, At The Same Time, It Gives The Same Satisfaction Of Creating A Complete World.

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.

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

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.

...knowing That To Be A Librarian Was To Come As Close As Any Human Being Can To Sitting In The Peak-seat Of Eternity's Engine.

Cold Start Is A Hard Start.

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

We Never Know Which Lives We Influence, Or When, Or Why.

The Death Of The Music Business Was Insane, But Audio Recordings Have Been Around Now For Maybe 120 Years. Books Have Been Around For, What, Nine Centuries? So They're More Entrenched Than Music.

Where The World Ends Is Where You Must Begin

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 Felt Lonely And Content At The Same Time. I Believe That Is A Rare Kind Of Happiness.

It's A Cash And Carry World. Sometimes You Pay A Little. Mostly It's A Lot. Sometimes, It's Everything You Have.

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.

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.

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.

This Inhuman Place Makes Human Monsters.

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

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.

Delicate Things

God Doesn't Bribe, Child. He Just Makes A Sign And Lets People Take It As They Will.

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.

Madness Is A Kind Of Mental Suicide.

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

Men Who Find Themselves Late Are Never Sure. They Are All The Things The Civics Books Tell Us The Good Citizen Should Be: Partisans But Never Zealots, Respectors Of The Facts Which Attend Each Situation But Never Benders Of Those Facts, Uncomfortable In Positions Of Leadership But Rarely Unable To Turn Down A Responsibility Once It Has Been Offered . . . Or Thrust Upon Them. They Make The Best Leaders In A Democracy Because They Are Unlikely To Fall In Love With Power.

Falling In Love

Your Pimples Are The Lord's Way Of Chastising You. Now Eat Your Pie.

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.

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

I Identify With The Characters Very Closely. At The Same Time That I`m Outside, Writing, I`m Also Inside, Experiencing, And It Can Be Very Unsettling.

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

Although Emotionally Delicate And Eminently Bruisable, Teenagers Are Short On Empathy. That Comes Later In Life, If It Comes At All.

If You Liked Being A Teenager, There's Something Really Wrong With You.

Being A Teenager

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?

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.

Do You Need Someone To Make You A Paper Badge With The Word Writer On It Before You Can Believe You Are One? God I Hope Not.

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

Lovecraft Opened The Way For Me, As He Had Done For Others Before Me

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

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

The Definition Of An Asshole Is Someone Who Doesn't Believe What He Is Seeing.

The Situation Comes First...the Characters...come Next...[then] Begin To Narrate.

The Turtle Couldn't Help Us.

He Looked To Her Like An Absurd Twentieth-century Hamlet, An Indecisive Figure So Mesmerized By Onrushing Tragedy That He Was Helpless To Divert Its Course Or Alter It In Any Way.

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.

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

Every Marriage Has Two Hearts, One Light And One Dark

He's A Very Nice Man And All That, Easy To Get Along With, Fun, He Never Makes Me Cry. But Is That Love? I Mean, Is That All There Is To It? Even When You Learned To Ride Your Two-wheeler, You Had To Fall Off A Few Times And Scrape Both Knees. Call It A Rite Of Passage. And That Was Just A Little Thing.

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

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.

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

Rage-the Biggest, Truest Rage Of Her Adult Life-had Invaded Her Like A Fever, But It Wasn't Like Any Fever She Had Known Previously. It Circulated Like Weird Serum, Cold On The Right Side Of Her Body, Then Hot On The Left, Where Her Heart Was. It Seemed To Come Nowhere Near Her Head, Which Remained Clear.

I Like To Always Stop With A Couple Of Pages That I Haven't - That Are Just Raw Copy, Where I Haven't Touched It, I Haven't Tried To Revise It, I Haven't Tried To Polish It. It's Like Having A Little Bit Of A Runway. The Next Day When You Sit Down, You Have The Comfort Of Saying, Well, I Have Got A Little Bit Here, Used To Be In The Typewriter. Now It's In The Magic Box, The Computer.

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.'

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

The Trick Is To Teach Yourself To Read In Small Sips As Well As Long Swallows.

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.

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.

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

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.

A Friend Came To Visit James Joyce One Day And Found The Great Man Sprawled Across His Writing Desk In A Posture Of Utter Despair. James, What’s Wrong?' The Friend Asked. 'is It The Work?' Joyce Indicated Assent Without Even Raising His Head To Look At His Friend. Of Course It Was The Work; Isn’t It Always? How Many Words Did You Get Today?' The Friend Pursued. Joyce (still In Despair, Still Sprawled Facedown On His Desk): 'seven.' Seven? But James… That’s Good, At Least For You.' Yes,' Joyce Said, Finally Looking Up. 'i Suppose It Is… But I Don’t Know What Order They Go In!

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

Death Is A Mystery, And Burial Is A Secret.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

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.

My Father Had Taught Me - Mostly By Example - That If A Man Wanted To Be In Charge Of His Life, He Had To Be In Charge Of His Problems.

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.

Stories Are Like Relics, Part Of An Undiscovered Preexisting World. The Writer's Job Is To Use The Tools In His Or Her Toolbox To Get As Much Of Each One Out Of The Ground Intact As Possible.

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

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).

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

I'm A Situational Writer. You Give Me A Situation, Like A Writer Gets In A Car Crash, Breaks His Leg, Is Kidnapped By His Number-one Fan, And Is Kept In A Cabin And Forced To Write A Book - Everything Else Springs From There. You Really Don't Have To Work Once You've Had The Idea. All You Have To Do Is Kind Of Take Dictation From Something Inside.

He Was A Clot Looking For A Place To Happen, A Splinter Of Bone Hunting A Soft Organ To Puncture, A Lonely Lunatic Cell Looking For A Mate - They Would Set Up Housekeeping And Raise Themselves A Cozy Little Malignant Tumor.

Americans Are Apocalyptic By Nature. The Reason Why Is That We've Always Had So Much, So We Live In Deadly Fear That People Are Going To Take It Away From Us.

The Rope By Which The Great Blocks Of Taxes Are Attached To Any Citizenry Is Simple Loyalty.

When I Was Younger, I Used To Vacillate Between Thinking Love Was This Great And Glorious Mystery And Thinking It Was Just Something A Bunch Of Hollywood Move Producers Made Up To Sell More Tickets In The Depression, When Dish Night Kind Of Played Out." Eddie Laughed. Now I Think That All Of Us Are Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You...eddie, You Fill Me Up.

What Charitable 1 Percenters Can't Do Is Assume Responsibility - America's National Responsibilities: The Care Of Its Sick And Its Poor, The Education Of Its Young, The Repair Of Its Failing Infrastructure, The Repayment Of Its Staggering War Debts.

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.

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?

Time Is A Face On The Water.

And If You Are Honest About The Words Coming Out Of Your Characters' Mouths, You'll Find That You've Let Yourself In For A Fair Amount Of Criticism.

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

I Believe There Is An Unseen World All Around Us.

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.

As A Young Man Just Beginning To Publish Some Short Fiction In The T&a Magazines, I Was Fairly Optimistic About My Chances Of Getting Published; I Knew That I Had Some Game, As The Basketball Players Say These Days, And I Also Felt That Time Was On My Side; Sooner Or Later The Best-selling Writers Of The Sixties And Seventies Would Either Die Or Go Senile, Making Room For Newcomers Like Me.

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

But Then Fall Comes, Kicking Summer Out On Its Treacherous Ass As It Always Does One Day Sometime After The Midpoint Of September, It Stays Awhile Like An Old Friend That You Have Missed. It Settles In The Way An Old Friend Will Settle Into Your Favorite Chair And Take Out His Pipe And Light It And Then Fill The Afternoon With Stories Of Places He Has Been And Things He Has Done Since Last He Saw You.

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.

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.

Pride Was The Belt You Used To Hold Your Pants Up When You Had No Pants.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

Money Can't Buy Off The Lightning.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Think There Ought To Be Some Serious Discussion By Smart People, Really Smart People, About Whether Or Not Proliferation Of Things Like The Smoking Gun And Tmz And Youtube And The Whole Celebrity Culture Is Healthy.

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.

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

Dark Tower Series

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

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

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!

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

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.

I Know I Can Do It," Todd Downey Said, Helping Himself To Another Ear Of Corn From The Steaming Bowl. "i'm Sure That In Time Her Death Will Be A Mystery, Even To Me.

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

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.

Jesus Watches From The Wall, But His Face Is Cold As Stone, And If He Loves Me As She Tells Me Why Do I Feel So All Alone?

A Lot Of Fairy Tales Are Thinly Disguised Hostility Raps Against Parents. Kids Know That They Can't Make It On Their Own, That If They Were Left Alone, They Would Die.

I Think Most Of Us Can Remember From Our Own Childhood, Just In The Disney Cartoons, Things That Frightened Us Profoundly. For Me It Was Bambi, The Scene When The Forest Was On Fire. That Was Something I Had Nightmares About. I Can't Imagine Being A Little Kid Of Eight And Seeing Night Of The Living Dead With Living Corpses Eating The Flesh Of Living People.

Rationalism Is The Idea That We Can Ever Understand Anything About The State Of Being. It's A Deathtrip. It Always Has Been. . . . And If Rationalism Is A Deathtrip, Then Irrationalism Might Very Well Be A Lifetrip . . . At Least Until It Proves Otherwise.

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

When You Put On A Clown Suit And A Rubber Nose, Nobody Has Any Idea What You Look Like Inside.

I Like To Hang Out Clothes On Windy Days. Sometimes That's All I Feel Like. A Sheet On A Line.

Your Hair Is Winter Fire January Embers My Heart Burns There, Too.

You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

Dreams Age Faster Than Dreamers.

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.

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.

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.

The Dream Didn't Fade As Dreams Usually Do Upon Waking.

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

Eddie Discovered One Of His Childhood's Great Truths. Grownups Are The Real Monsters, He Thought.

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.

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

God Turned Out To Be A Bunch Of Bad Little Kids Playing Interstellar Xbox. Isn't That Funny?

The One Thing About Kids Is That You Never Really Know Exactly What They're Thinking Or How They're Seeing. After Writing About Kids, Which Is A Little Bit Like Putting The Experience Under A Magnifying Glass, You Realize You Have No Idea How You Thought As A Kid. I've Come To The Conclusion That Most Of The Things That We Remember About Our Childhood Are Lies. We All Have Memories That Stand Out From When We Were Kids, But They're Really Just Snapshots. You Can't Remember How You Reacted Because Your Whole Head Is Different When You Stand Aside.

Most Books About Writing Are Filled With Bullshit. Fiction Writers, Present Company Included, Don’t Understand Very Much About What They Do—not Why It Works When It’s Good, Not Why It Doesn’t When It’s Bad.

Fault Always Lies In The Same Place: With Him Weak Enough To Lay Blame.

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.

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

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

Everything In Moderation. And That Includes A Couple Of Beers A Day.

They Had Become A Fixed Star In The Shifting Firmament Of The High School's Relationships, The Acknowledged Romeo And Juliet. And She Knew With Sudden Hatefulness That There Was One Couple Like Them In Every White Suburban High School In America.

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?

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