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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.

-Stephen King

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There Are, Occasionally, Writers

Stephen King

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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.

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

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You Said 'god Is Cruel' The Way A Person Who's Lived His Whole Life On Tahiti Might Say 'snow Is Cold'. You Knew, But You Didn't Understand." He Stepped Close To David And Put His Palms On The Boy's Cold Cheeks. "do You Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?

Remember, Hope Is A Good Thing, Maybe The Best Of Things, And No Good Thing Ever Dies.

The Ghost Story Movie That Scared Me The Most Was The Changeling With George C. Scott. I Think That's Sometimes Overlooked, But It's A Wonderful Piece Of Work.

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

I'm Not Making An Enemy; I'm Keepin' One.

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.

Poe Was The First Writer To Write About Main Characters Who Were Bad Guys Or Who Were Mad Guys, And Those Are Some Of My Favorite Stories.

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

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

Anything With The Power To Make You Laugh Over Thirty Years Later Isn’t A Waste Of Time. I Think Something Like That Is Very Close To Immortality.

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

One Can Often Trace The Sources Of A Brand Personality - Here It Is The Advertising, There The Pack, Somewhere Else Some Physical Element Of The Product. Of Course, The Personality Is Clearest And Strongest When All The Elements Are Consistent.

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

The Great Thing About Writing Is That...you Can Do All These Antisocial Things And You Get Paid For Them And Nobody Ever Arrests You Because They're All Make-believe. Then That Way If You Were Actually Ever Driven To Do Any Of Those Things, The Pressure's Off Because You'd Have Already Written Them Down. It's Therapy.

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When You Sit Down To Write, Write. Don't Do Anything Else Except Go To The Bathroom, And Only Do That If It Absolutely Cannot Be Put Off.

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.

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

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.

The Quickest Way To Learn About A New Place Is To Know What It Dreams Of.

We All Have A Tendency To Want Order In Our Lives. But Order Presupposes Authority, And Authority Presupposes, Sooner Or Later, That We'll All Need Hooves. It's Going To Happen Sooner Or Later, Isn't It? You Know It Is.

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.

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.

Only God Gets Things Right The First Time.

Sometimes When You're Young, You Have Moments Of Such Happiness, You Think You're Living On Someplace Magical, Like Atlantis Must Have Been. Then We Grow Up And Our Hearts Break Into Two.

Lying In The Bed That Had Once Held Two, Lisey Thought Alone Never Felt More Lonely Than When You Woke Up And Discovered You Still Had The House To Yourself. That You And The Mice In The Walls Were The Only Ones Still Breathing.

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?

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Say Your Name Over Two Hundred Times And Discover You Are No One.

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The Battle Between Good And Evil Is Endlessly Fascinating Because We Are Participants Every Day.

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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.

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Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

Some Things Were Better Lost Than Found.

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

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Procrastination

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

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

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

Murder Is Like Potato Chips: You Can't Stop With Just One.

For A Woman A Man Will Do Many Things That He'd Turn His Back On In An Instant When Alone; Things He'd Back Away From, Nine Times Out Of Ten, Even When Drunk Adn With A Bunch Of His Friends Egging Him On.

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.

He Supposed That Even In Hell, People Got An Occasional Sip Of Water, If Only So They Could Appreciate The Full Horror Of Unrequited Thirst When It Set In Again.

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

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No One Ever Really Pays For Betrayal In Silver....the Price Of Any Betrayal Always Comes Due In Flesh.

Lover," She Whispers, And Closes Her Eyes. It Falls Upon Her. Love Is Like Dying.

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.

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

Being A Teenager

For A Moment Everything Was Clear, And When That Happens You See That The World Is Barely There At All. Don't We All Secretly Know This? It's A Perfectly Balanced Mechanism Of Shouts And Echoes Pretending To Be Wheels And Cogs, A Dreamclock Chiming Beneath A Mystery-glass We Call Life. Behind It? Below It And Around It? Chaos, Storms. Men With Hammers, Men With Knives, Men With Guns. Women Who Twist What They Cannot Dominate And Belittle What They Cannot Understand. A Universe Of Horror And Loss Surrounding A Single Lighted Stage Where Mortals Dance In Defiance Of The Dark.

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.

Artistic Talent Is Far More Common Than The Talent To Nurture Artistic Talent.

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When I Was A Kid I Believed Everything I Was Told, Everything I Read, And Every Dispatch Sent Out By My Own Overheated Imagination. This Made For More Than A Few Sleepless Nights, But It Also Filled The World I Lived In With Colors And Textures I Would Not Have Traded For A Lifetime Of Restful Nights.

Best Not To Look Back. Best To Believe There Will Be Happily Ever Afters All The Way Around - And So There May Be; Who Is To Say There Will Not Be Such Endings? Not All Boats Which Sail Away Into Darkness Never Find The Sun Again, Or The Hand Of Another Child; If Life Teaches Anything At All, It Teachers That There Are So Many Happy Endings That The Man Who Believes There Is No God Needs His Rationality Called Into Serious Question.

Superhero Movies And Comic Books Teach A Lesson That Runs Directly Counter To The Culture-of-violence Idea: Guns Are For Bad Guys Too Cowardly To Fight Like Men.

I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

The Age Of The Book Is Not Over. No Way... But Maybe The Age Of Some Books Is Over. People Say To Me Sometimes 'steve, Are You Ever Going To Write A Straight Novel, A Serious Novel' And By That They Mean A Novel About College Professors Who Are Having Impotence Problems Or Something Like That. And I Have To Say Those Things Just Don't Interest Me. Why? I Don't Know. But It Took Me About Twenty Years To Get Over That Question, And Not Be Kind Of Ashamed About What I Do, Of The Books I Write.

I Think It Is Harder To Write A Story That Appeals To The Intellect. But, When You Tie Onto One, You Can Do It Quite Deeply. It Really Depends On The Type Of Idea You Have To Begin With.

I Still Believe In The Resilience Of The Human Heart And The Essential Validity Of Love;i Still Believe That Connections Between People Can Be Made And That The Spirits Which Inhabit Us Sometimes Touch. I Still Believe That The Cost Of These Connections Is Horribly, Outrageously High... And I Still Believe That The Value Received Far Outweighs The Price Which Must Be Paid. (from Introductory Notes.)

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.

True Love Always Happens In A Flash.

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

What I'm Saying Is That I'm Trying To Find Rational Reasons To Explain Irrational Feelings, And That's Neveer A Good Sign.

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

People Can Be Stunningly Unobservant.

If You Don't Control Your Temper, Your Temper Will Control You.

Show Me A Man Or A Woman Alone And I'll Show You A Saint. Give Me Two And They'll Fall In Love. Give Me Three And They'll Invent The Charming Thing We Call 'society'. Give Me Four And They'll Build A Pyramid. Give Me Five And They'll Make One An Outcast. Give Me Six And They'll Reinvent Prejudice. Give Me Seven And In Seven Years They'll Reinvent Warfare. Man May Have Been Made In The Image Of God, But Human Society Was Made In The Image Of His Opposite Number, And Is Always Trying To Get Back Home.

Falling In Love

Most Gothics Are Overplotted Novels Whose Success Or Failure Hinges On The Author's Ability To Make You Believe In The Characters And Partake Of The Mood.

And That Almost Killed You?" "it Wasn't Deep But It Got Infected. Infection Means That The Bad Germs Got Into It. Infection's The Most Dangerous Thing There Is, Tom. Infection Was What Made The Superflu Germ Kill All The People. And Infection Is What Made People Want To Make The Germ In The First Place. An Infection Of The Mind.

Why' Is A Crooked Letter And Can't Be Made Straight.

When You Stack Up All The Years We Are Allowed Against All There Is To Read, Time Is Very Short Indeed.

Art Is The Concrete Artifact Of Faith And Expectation, The Realization Of A World That Would Otherwise Be Little More Than A Veil Of Pointless Consciousness Stretched Over A Gulf Of Mystery.

The Universe (he Said) Offers A Paradox Too Great For The Finite Mind To Grasp. As The Living Brain Cannot Conceive Of A Nonliving Brain — Although It May Think It Can — The Finite Mind Cannot Grasp The Infinite.

When You're Five And You Hurt, You Make A Big Noise In The World. At Ten You Whimper. But By The Time You Make Fifteen You Begin To Eat The Poisoned Apples That Grow On Your Own Inner Tree Of Pain.

No One Can Be As Intellectually Slothful As A Really Smart Person

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.

If Being A Kid Is About Learning How To Live, Then Being A Grown-up Is About Learning How To Die.

Here I Am, Ninety Years Old And Ready For The Cooling Board, Using A Brand New Macintosh Computer, And There You Sit, Twenty-two And Gorgeous, Fresh As A New Peach, Yet Scrawling On A Yellow Legal Pad Like An Old Maid In A Victorian Romance.

There Had Never Been A Shortage Of Fools In The World

Terrible Thing To Live In Fear. Brooks Hatlen Knew It. Knew It All Too Well. All I Want Is To Be Back Where Things Make Sense. Where I Won't Have To Be Afraid All The Time.

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

You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

So Do We Pass The Ghosts That Haunt Us Later In Our Lives; They Sit Undramatically By The Roadside Like Poor Beggars, And We See Them Only From The Corners Of Our Eyes, If We See Them At All. The Idea That They Have Been Waiting There For Us Rarely Crosses Our Minds. Yet They Do Wait, And When We Have Passed, They Gather Up Their Bundles Of Memory And Fall In Behind, Treading In Our Footsteps And Catching Up, Little By Little.

Time Heals All Wounds.

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 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.

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.

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

City Life Is No Life For A Country Man; For Such A Man That Life Is A Kind Of Damnation In Itself.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Little By Little, Writers Develop Their Own Styles, Each As Unique As A Fingerprint.

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.

Yet Suppose Further. Suppose That All Worlds, All Universes, Met At A Single Nexus, A Single Pylon, A Tower. And Within It, A Stairway, Perhaps Rising To The Godhead Itself. Would You Dare Climb To The Top, Gunslinger? Could It Be That Somewhere Above All Of Endless Reality, There Exists A Room?...' You Dare Not.' And In The Gunslinger's Mind, Those Words Echoed: You Dare Not.

And Suddenly It Didn't Seem To Matter Any More, Nothing Would Matter If She Could Turn Over, Turn Over And See The Stars, Turn Over And Look Once And Die.

He Didn’t Know If That Was Really True Or Not, But He Discovered Something Which Was Tremendously Liberating: He Didn’t Care. He Was Very Tired Of Thinking And Thinking And Still Not Knowing. He Was Also Tired Of Being Frightened, Like A Man Who Has Entered A Cave On A Lark And Now Begins To Suspect He Is Lost. Stop Thinking About It, Then. That’s The Solution.

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

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.

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

She Ran Out Of Her Marriage The Way A Woman Can Run Out Of A Pair Of Sandals When She Decides To Let Go And Really Dash.

In A Brilliant Fusion Of Fact And Fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips Has Written The Novel Of The Year. It's The Story Of A Serial Killer's Crimes And Capture, Yes, But It's Also A Compulsively Readable Story Of How One Brave Woman Faces Up To Acts Of Terrible Violence In Order To Create Something Good And Strong In The Aftermath. Quiet Dell Will Be Compared To In Cold Blood, But Phillips Offers Something Capote Could Not: A Heroine Who Lights Up The Dark Places And Gives Us Hope In Our Humanity.

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

You Can't Polish A Turd.

The Exhilaration Was Hard To Explain. It Was A Lonely Feeling — A Somehow Melancholy Feeling. He Was Outside; He Passed On The Wings Of The Wind, And None Of The People Beyond The Brightly Lighted Squares Of Their Windows Saw Him. They Were Inside, Inside Where There Was Light And Warmth. They Didn't Know He Had Passed Them; Only He Knew. It Was A Secret Thing.

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Time's The Thief Of Memory

If I Kept Saying It; If I Kept Reaching Out. My Accident Really Taught Me Just One Thing: The Only Way To Go On Is To Go On. To Say 'i Can Do This' Even When You Know You Can't.

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

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Once, During The Drinking Phase, Wendy Had Accused Him Of Desiring His Own Destruction But Not Possessing The Necessary Moral Fiber To Support A Full-blown Deathwish. So He Manufactured Ways In Which Other People Could Do It, Lopping A Piece At A Time Off Himself And Their Family.

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

Kids, Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie, And The Truth Of This Fiction Is Simple Enough: The Magic Exists.

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

You Should Never Trust A Person Who Prays In Public.

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

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

Death, But Not For You, Gunslinger. Never For You. You Darkle. You Tinct. May I Be Brutally Frank? You Go On.

Do You Drink?" "of Course,i Just Said I Was A Writer.

Books And Movies Are Like Apples And Oranges. They Both Are Fruit, But Taste Completely Different.

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.

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

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs.

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

The First Movie I Ever Saw Was A Horror Movie. It Was Bambi. When That Little Deer Gets Caught In A Forest Fire, I Was Terrified, But I Was Also Exhilarated.

But This Wealth Of Information Produced Little Or No Insight.

Sometimes Dead Is Better

Remember That 'plumber In Space' Is Not Such A Bad Setup For A Story.

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.

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

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.

Belief In The Supernatural Or Belief In Wild Talents Like Precognition And Telepathy And Telekinesis And Things Like That, It Seems To Me That Belief In Those Things Is Just Very, Very Freeing.

A Great Whispering Noise Began To Rise In The Woods On Either Side Of The Tracks, As If The Forest Had Just Noticed We Were There And Was Commenting On It.

There's Two Kinds Of Evil That Horror Fiction Always Deals With. One Kind Is The Sort Of Evil That Comes From Inside People, Like In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. The Other Kind Of Evil Is Predestined Evil. It Falls On You Like A Stroke Of Lightning. That's The Scary Stuff, But, In A Way, It's The Stuff You Don't Have To Worry About. I Gotta Worry Whether Or Not I'm Getting Cavities. I Gotta Worry About Whether Cigarettes Are Giving Me Cancer. Those Are Things I Can Change. Don't Give Me Lightning Out Of A Clear Sky. If That Hits Me I Just Say, "that's Probably The Way God Meant It To Be."

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.

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.

I Don't Make Movies. I Don't Feel That I Have To Have Artistic Control. Part Of This Comes From The Fact That The Book Lives On No Matter What Hollywood Does To Your Novel In Terms Of A Film. Now, You Try To Be Careful Who You Allow To Do Your Film Because Nobody Wants Their Novel To Become A Turkey Movie. But, On The Other Hand, It Is A Crapshot Anyway, Because Even The Best People Can Make A Bad Film.

She Nods. You're Good For The Ones You Love. You Want To Be Good For The Ones You Love, Because You Know That Your Time With Them Will End Up Being Too Short, No Matter How Long It Is.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them.

There Was A Lot They Didn’t Tell You About Death, She Had Discovered, And One Of The Biggies Was How Long It Took The Ones You Loved Most To Die In Your Heart.

In The Years Since, I've Discovered There's A Lot To Be Said For Boredom.

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

Dark Tower Series

As Always, The Blessed Relief Of Starting, A Feeling That Was Like Falling Into A Hole Filled With Bright Light. As Always, The Glum Knowledge That He Would Not Write As Well As He Wanted To Write. As Always The Terror Of Not Being Able To Finish, Of Accelerating Into A Brick Wall. As Always, The Marvelous Joyful Nervy Feeling Of Journey Begun.

God Wiped Snot Out Of His Nose And That Was You.

But In High School The Business Of Irrevocable Choices Began. Doors Slipped Shut With A Faint Locking Click That Was Only Heared Clearly In The Dreams Of Later Years.

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.

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.

The First Draft Of A Book—even A Long One—should Take No More Than Three Months, The Length Of A Season.

Writers Remember Everything...especially The Hurts. Strip A Writer To The Buff, Point To The Scars, And He'll Tell You The Story Of Each Small One. From The Big Ones You Get Novels. A Little Talent Is A Nice Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer, But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember The Story Of Every Scar. Art Consists Of The Persistence Of Memory.

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