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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.

-Stephen King

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There's Something In Us

Stephen King

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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.

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An Idea Is Like A Cold Germ: Sooner Or Later Someone Always Catches It.

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

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Some Tears Have To Be Cried No Matter What The Hour- Until They Are, They Simply Rave And Burn Inside.

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Haste Makes Waste

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.

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

It's As If God Gave You Something-all Those Stories- And Said, "here You Are. Try Not To Lose It." But Children Lose Everything Unless Somebody Is There To Help Them, And If Your Parents Are Too Stupid To Do It, Maybe I Ought To.

Just Remember That Dumbo Didn't Need The Feather; The Magic Was In Him.

By And Large... The Good's An Illusion, Little Fables Folks Tell Themselves So They Can Get Through Their Days Without Screaming Too Much.

One Of Life's Great Truths Is This: When One Is About To Be Struck By A Speeding Six-hundred Pound Coke Machine, One Need Worry About Little Else.

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.)

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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.

It's A Little Place On The Pacific Ocean. You Know What The Mexicans Say About The Pacific? They Say It Has No Memory. That's Where I Want To Live The Rest Of My Life. A Warm Place With No Memory.

Sometimes Dead Is Better

To Write Is Human, To Edit Is Divine.

I'm Seen As Somebody Who Writes For Adults Because I'm An Older Man Myself. Some Of Them Find Me, And A Lot Of Them Don't.

Give Me Just Enough Information So That I Can Lie Convincingly.

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.

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

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It's Funny How Close The Past Is, Sometimes. Sometimes It Seems As If You Could Almost Reach Out And Touch It. Only Who Really Wants To?

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

Fantasy And Reality

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It Is, After All, The Dab Of Grit That Seeps Into An Oyster's Shell That Makes The Pearl, Not Pearl-making Seminars With Other Oysters.

There's A Mr. Hyde For Every Happy Jekyll Face, A Dark Face On The Other Side Of The Mirror.

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

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There May Be Fairies, There May Be Elves, But God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

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Some Part Of Me Knew From The First That What I Wanted Was Not Reality But Myth.

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

Readers Have A Loyalty That Cannot Be Matched Anywhere Else In The Creative Arts, Which Explains Why So Many Writers Who Have Run Out Of Gas Can Keep Coasting Anyway, Propelled On To The Bestseller Lists By The Magic Words Author Of On The Covers Of Their Books.

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.

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

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.

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.

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I Stood For Almost An Hour In A Line Of Shuffling, Bitter - Eyed Late Mailers (christmas Is Such A Carefree, Low - Pressure Time - That's One Of The Things I Love About It).

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.

Life Turns On A Dime. Sometimes Towards Us, But More Often It Spins Away, Flirting And Flashing As It Goes: So Long, Honey, It Was Good While It Lasted, Wasn’t It?

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

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

People Think That I Must Be A Very Strange Person. This Is Not Correct. I Have The Heart Of A Small Boy. It Is In A Glass Jar On My Desk.

Be True, Be Brave, Stand All The Rest Is Darkness.

That's Not Such A Bad Thing,' He Said To Me. 'in Nightmares We Can Think The Worst. That's What They're For, I Guess.

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.

Hemingway Sucks. If I Set Out To Write That Way, It Would Have Been Been Hollow And Lifeless Because It Wasn't Me.

She Didn't See Him At First. She Was Watching The Dancers. Her Color Was High, And There Were Deep Dimples At The Corners Of Her Mouth. She Looked Nine Miles Out Of Place, But He Had Never Loved Her More. This Was Willa On The Edge Of A Smile.

Elvis Presley's Talent Brightened Millions Of Lives. He Widened The Horizons Of My World Certainly. The First Record I Ever Owned Was A 78 Rpm Of "hound Dog" Backed By "don't Be Cruel" And When I Listened To Those Tunes I Felt About Ten Feet Tall And I Grinned So Hard That I Felt Like The Corners Of My Mouth Would Meet In The Back And The Tip Of My Head Would Simply Topple Off. All I Know About Rock And Roll Is That It Makes People Feel Good. Elvis Presley More Than Made Me Feel Good, He Enriched My Life And Made It Better.

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

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You Know," Glen Bateman Said, Looking Out Toward Grand Junction In The Early Light Of Morning, "i've Heard The Saying 'that Sucks' For Years Without Really Being Sure Of What It Meant. Now I Think I Know.

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I’ve Always Said To People, "i Don’t Care What You Call Me As Long As The Checks Don’t Bounce And The Family Gets Fed." But I Never Saw Myself That Way. I Just Saw Myself As A Novelist.

Optimism Is A Perfectly Legitimate Response To Failure.

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

The Last Good Time Always Comes, And When You See The Darkness Creeping Toward You, You Hold On To What Was Bright And Good. You Hold On For Dear Life.

And The Rain Went Rollin Down The Windowpanes, And The Shadows Wiggled N' Squiggled On Her Check And Forehead Like Black Veins.

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.

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

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

When Love Leaves The World, All Hearts Are Still. Tell Them Of My Love And Tell Them Of My Pain And Tell Them Of My Hope, Which Still Lives. For This Is All I Have And All I Am And All I Ask.

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?

We're News Junkies In My House.

The Turtle Couldn't Help Us.

He Understood Well Enough How A Man With A Choice Between Pride And Responsibility Will Almost Always Choose Pride--if Responsibility Robs Him Of His Manhood.

True Love Always Happens In A Flash.

A Little Talent Is A Good Thing To Have If You Want To Be A Writer. But The Only Real Requirement Is The Ability To Remember Every Scar.

And This Wasn’t Lying, Not Really. It Was Leaving Out.

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

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.

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

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.

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

All Thing Serve The Beam

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

It Hurt, Of Course, But More Often Than Not The Best Things Do, I've Found.

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

Keeping Secrets

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.

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.

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

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

And I Believe Happiness Is The Exact Opposite Of Sadness, Bitterness, And Hatred: Happiness Should Remain Unexamined As Long As Possible.

No One Ever Does Live Happily Ever After, But We Leave The Children To Find That Out For Themselves.

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