Background Image

...

There Were No Horror Movies Or Horror Books To Speak Of In The '40s. I Picked The '50s Because That Pretty Well Spans My Life As An Appreciator - As Somebody Who's Been Involved With This Mass Cult Of Horror, From Radio And Movies And Saturday Matinees And Books. In The '40s There Really Wasn't That Much. People Don't Want To Read About Horrible Things In Horrible Times. So, In The '40s, There Was Val Lutin With The Cat People And The Curse Of The Cat People And There Wasn't Much Else.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Were No Horror

Stephen King

...

There Were No Horror Movies Or Horror Books To Speak Of In The '40s. I Picked The '50s Because That Pretty Well Spans My Life As An Appreciator - As Somebody Who's Been Involved With This Mass Cult Of Horror, From Radio And Movies And Saturday Matinees And Books. In The '40s There Really Wasn't That Much. People Don't Want To Read About Horrible Things In Horrible Times. So, In The '40s, There Was Val Lutin With The Cat People And The Curse Of The Cat People And There Wasn't Much Else.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Stephen King

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.

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

Sometimes The Only Thing To Do Is To Take The Thing That You Must Have. Even If Someone Gets Hurt.

Shall There Be Truth Between Us, As Two Men? Not As Friends, But As Enemies And Equals?

If You Want To Play, You Gotta Pay.

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

The World, Although Well-lighted With Fluorescents And Incandescent Bulbs And Neon, Is Still Full Of Odd Dark Corners And Unsettling Nooks And Crannies.

The Glory Of A Good Tale Is That It Is Limitless And Fluid; A Good Tale Belongs To Each Reader In Its Own Particular Way.

I Can Remember Being Home From School With Tonsillitis And Writing Stories In Bed To Pass The Time.

All Right I Think We've Been Down Here In The Dark Long Enough. There's A Whole Other World Upstairs. Take My Hand Constant Reader And I'll Be Happy To Lead You Back Into The Sunshine. I'm Happy To Go There Because I Believe Most People Are Essentially Good. I Know That I Am. It's You I'm Not Entirely Sure Of.

Guys, Gals, Now Hear This: No One Wants To Take Away Your Hunting Rifles. No One Wants To Take Away Your Shotguns. No One Wants To Take Away Your Revolvers, And No One Wants To Take Away Your Automatic Pistols, As Long As Said Pistols Hold No More Than Ten Rounds. If You Can't Kill A Home Invader (or Your Wife, Up In The Middle Of The Night To Get A Snack From The Fridge) With Ten Shots, You Need To Go Back To The Local Shooting Range.

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

The Past Is Obdurate.

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

Yes, I’ve Made A Great Deal Of Dough From My Fiction, But I Never Set A Single Word Down On Paper With The Thought Of Being Paid For It...i Have Written Because It Fulfilled Me. ... I Did It For The Pure Joy Of The Things. And If You Can Do It For Joy, You Can Do It Forever.

Loving What You Do

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.

Writing's About Getting Up, Getting Well, And Getting Over. Getting Happy, Okay? Getting Happy.

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

We've Switched From A Culture That Was Interested In Manufacturing, Economics, Politics - Trying To Play A Serious Part In The World - To A Culture That's Really Entertainment-based.

The Trust Of The Innocent Is The Liar's Most Useful Tool.

If You're Going Into A Very Dark Place, Then You Should Take A Bright Light, And Shine It On Everything. If You Don't Want To See, Why In God's Name Would You Dare The Dark At All?

For Me, Good Description Usually Consists Of A Few Well-chosen Details That Will Stand For Everything Else.

I Started After Him...and The Clown Looked Back. I Saw Its Eyes, And All At Once I Understood Who It Was." "who Was It, Don?" Harold Gardner Asked Softly. "it Was Derry," Don Hagarty Said. "it Was This Town.

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.

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.

Trust, A Sense Of Humor, And Don't Let The Sun Go Down On An Argument Without Trying To Make It Up. That's All I Know About Good Marriage. I've Been Married A Long Time - It Seems To Be Working.

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.

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

No One Dies Happy, You Can Only Die Well

To The Devil With False Modesty.

...book-buyers Aren't Attracted, By And Large, By The Literary Merits Of A Novel: Book-buyers Want A Good Story...something That Will First Fascinate Them, Then Pull Them In And Keep Them Turning The Pages.

Do They See The Lethal Insanity Of A Race To The Brink Of Oblivion, And Then Over The Edge? Apparently Not. If They Did, Surely They Wouldn't Be Racing To Begin With. Or Is It A Simple Failure Of Imagination? One Doesn't Like To Think Such A Rudimentary Failing Could Bring About The End, Yet...

By Its Very Nature, Film Is Supposed To Be An Accessible Medium To Everybody.

I've Spread My Legs In The Backseat In A Creative Sense Quite A Few Times.

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

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

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.

The Good Thing About Being Old, Is You Don’t Have To Worry About Dying Young.

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.

We Never Cease Wanting What We Want, Whether It's Good For Us Or Not.

Are You Sure Self-pity Is A Luxury You Can Afford, Jack?

There’s Always A Choice. That’s God’s Way, Always Will Be. Your Will Is Still Free. Do As You Will. There’s No Set Of Leg-irons On You. But... This Is What God Wants Of You.

The Year She Had Run Fleetly Through The Dewy Grass Under The Moon- The Night Of Wine, When Dreams Condensed Out Of Thin Air Like The Nightmilk Of Fantasy.

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

Time's The Thief Of Memory

The Act Of Writing Itself Is Done In Secret, Like Masturbation.

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

That Was What I Wanted, But I Don't Need It To Be Gone. I Can Love You And I Can Love Life And Bear The Pain All At The Same Time. I Think The Pain Might Even Make The Rest Better, The Way A Good Setting Can Make A Diamond Look Better.

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.

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.

Now I Think All Of Us Were Born With A Hole In Our Hearts, And We Go Around Looking For The Person Who Can Fill It. You... You Fill Me Up.

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.

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

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

When The Reader Hears Strong Echoes Of His Or Her Own Life And Beliefs, He Or She Is Apt To Become More Invested In The Story.

Home Is Where You Dance With Others, And Dancing Is Life.

If You Were A Real Fascistic Society And You Had A Vocal Minority That Was Shouting, "stop This, Stop That, Stop The Other Thing," What You Would Say Is, "let's Give Them All The Drugs They Want." In A Lot Of States, Something Very Much Like That Happened. They Lowered The Drinking Age To Eighteen And Said, "get Juiced."

The Worst Thing You Can Try To Do Is To Steer The Story Once It Gets Going. You Just Kind Of Follow Along And See Where It Goes. That's The Fun.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Every Book You Pick Up Has Its Own Lesson Or Lessons, And Quite Often The Bad Books Have More To Teach Than The Good Ones.

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.

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.

I Like To End Stories Where The Readers Have A Little Room To Run. They Can Resolve Things As They Like In Their Own Mind.

The First Is That Good Writing Consists Of Mastering The Fundamentals (vocabulary, Grammar, The Elements Of Style) And Then Filling The Third Level Of Your Toolbox With The Right Instruments. The Second Is That While It Is Impossible To Make A Competent Writer Out Of A Bad Writer, And While Is Equally Impossible To Make A Great Writer Out Of A Good One, It Is Possible, With Lots Of Hard Work, Dedication, And Timely Help, To Make A Good Writer Out Of A Merely Competent One

I Write In The Mornings, In The Bright Daylight. But I Get Most Of My Good Ideas After The Sun Has Gone Down And The Dark Is On The Land.

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

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.

Deep Inside Her (ih Her Harrowed Soul) She Felt A Glowing Ember Of Fury At The Man Responsible For This. Tha Man Who Had Put Her In This Position. She Looked At The Pistol Lying Beside The Basin, And Knew That If He Were Here, She Would Use It On Him Without A Moment's Hesitation. Knowing That Made Her Feel Confused About Herself. It Also Made Her Feel A Little Stronger.

In The Stutter-flashes Of Light, The Clouds Look Like Huge Transparent Brains Filled With Bad Thoughts.

I Am In Trouble Here. This Woman Is Not Right.

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.

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.

Do You Happen To Have Another Condom? I Think I've Discovered The Cure For Headaches.

Waiting Rooms Were Made For Books-of Course! But So Are Theater Lobbies Before The Show, Long And Boring Checkout Lines, And Everyone's Favorite, The John.

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

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

I'd Like To Learn French Well Enough To Write In That Language.

In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That’s What Wireman Says.

Terror. When You Come Home And Notice Everything You Own Has Been Taken Away And Replaced By An Exact Substitute. It’s When The Lights Go Out And You Feel Something Behind You-you Hear It-you Feel Its Breath Against Your Ear, But When You Turn Around There’s Nothing There.

Somebody Said The Prospect Of Eminent Death Has A Wonderful Clarifying Effect On The Mind. And I Don't Know If That's True, But I Do Think It Probably Causes Some Changes, Some Evolution In The Way A Person Works. But On A Day-by-day Basis, I Just Still Enjoy Doing What I'm Doing.

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.

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.

Good Description Is A Learned Skill, One Of The Prime Reasons Why You Cannot Succeed Unless You Read A Lot And Write A Lot. It’s Not Just A Question Of How-to, You See; It’s Also A Question Of How Much To. Reading Will Help You Answer How Much, And Only Reams Of Writing Will Help You With The How. You Can Learn Only By Doing.

In Many Ways, Eulah-beulah Prepared Me For Literary Criticism. After Having A Two-hundred-pound Babysitter Fart On Your Face And Yell Pow!, The Village Voice Holds Few Terrors.

Swear To Me Swear To Me That If It Isn't Dead You'll All Come Back.

The Family Exists For Many Reasons, But Its Most Basic Function May Be To Draw Together After A Member Dies.

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.

For Men, I Think, Love Is A Thing Formed Of Equal Parts Lust And Astonishment. The Astonishment Part Women Understand. The Lust Part They Only Think They Understand.

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

I Love The Movies, And When I Go To See A Movie That's Been Made From One Of My Books, I Know That It Isn't Going To Be Exactly Like My Novel Because A Lot Of Other People Have Interpreted It. But I Also Know It Has An Idea That I'll Like Because That Idea Occurred To Me, And I Spent A Year, Or A Year And A Half Of My Life Working On It.

If There Is Love, Smallpox Scars Are As Pretty As Dimples. - Japanese Proverb

Japanese Proverbs

For Some Reason California's Always Been Where The Struggle Is About How Much Authority You Can Impose On People's Private Lives. It Seems To Show Up There Most Clearly. They Had A Helmet Law For Motorcycles In California And The Bikies Were Saying Things Like, "it Restricts My Vision. I Can't Hear What My Bike's Doing. If It Was On Fire I Wouldn't Know It Until My Ass Caught." And At The Bottom Line What The Bikies Were Saying Was, "look, It's My Goddamn Head And If I Want To Splatter My Brains All Over The Guardrails On The Coast Highway, Super For Me."

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

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!

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

She Had Never Dreamed There Could Be So Much Pain In A Life When There Was Nothing Physically Wrong. She Hurt All The Time.

Like Anything Else That Happens On Its Own, The Act Of Writing Is Beyond Currency. Money Is Great Stuff To Have, But When It Comes To The Act Of Creation, The Best Thing Is Not To Think Of Money Too Much. It Constipates The Whole Process.

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.

I Don't Really Get Philosophical, But I Believe That Nice People Are Strong And Usually In My Horror Stories, I Don't Like To Write About The Old Standard Where Some Rotten Guy Gets Chased By A Mean Spirit That Gets Him In The End.i'd Rather Write About Nice People That Are Menaced From Outside By Some Sort Of Evil Power And Who Sort Of Slug It Out.

Battles That Last Five Minutes Spawn Legends That Live A Thousand Years.

Human Beings Have Got A Lot Of Good, Noble Impulses Inside Them, And Most People Want To Be Good And Do More Good Than They Do Evil. Hell, We've Had Nuclear Weapons Now For Thirty Or Thirty-five Years And Nothing's Happened Yet. That In Itself Seems To Be A Miracle. If Reagan Pushes The Button Or Somebody Pushes The Button In Russia Or Somebody Pushes It In Costa Rica, They Can Put A Big Tombstone In Outer Space That Says, "we Gave It A Good Try." Because We Have.

I Realized The Shells Were Talking In A Voice I Recognized. I Should Have; It Was My Own. Had I Always Known That? I Suppose I Had. On Some Level, Unless We're Mad, I Think Most Of Us Know The Various Voices Of Our Own Imaginations. And Of Our Memories, Of Course. They Have Voices, Too. Ask Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Limb Or A Child Or A Long-cherished Dream. Ask Anyone Who Blames Himself For A Bad Decision, Usually Made In A Raw Instant (an Instant That Is Most Commonly Red). Our Memories Have Voices, Too. Often Sad Ones That Clamor Like Raised Arms In The Dark.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

I Think We Rarely Recognize The Fifth Business In Our Lives At The Time Those People Are Changing Us.

Ka Works And The World Moves On.

Grammar Is...the Pole You Grab To Get Your Thoughts Up On Their Feet And Walking.

Feet And Walking

Harry Potter Is About Confronting Fears, Finding Inner Strength And Doing What Is Right In The Face Of Adversity. Twilight Is About How Important It Is To Have A Boyfriend.

The More Fiction You Read And Write, The More You'll Find Your Paragraphs Forming On Their Own.

Research Can Only Present Data About The Past. No One Seriously Believes That People's Answers To Hypothetical Questions About The Future Accurately Represent Their Future Behaviour; They Merely Represent A Current Attitude, Which May Or May Not Be Translated Into Future Behaviour.

The Mystery Of The Universe Is Not Time But Size.

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.

May Be She’ll Learn Something About What Death Really Is, Which Is Where The Pain Stops And The Good Memories Begin. Not The End Of Life But The End Of Pain.

Of Course When You Were Running With The Bottom Dogs, What You Mostly Saw Were Paws, Claws, And Assholes.

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.

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

He Removed His Unvaluable Valuables And Dumped His Shirt, Pants, And Skivvies Into A Letter Slot.

Anyone Who Thinks Impressions Of Old Movie Actors Is Funny Absolutely Cannot Be Trusted. I Think It's Like A Law Of Nature.

Both Rowling And Meyer, They’re Speaking Directly To Young People. … The Real Difference Is That Jo Rowling Is A Terrific Writer And Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn. She’s Not Very Good.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

I And Everyone Else In This World Live In What Is Probably The Most Difficult Times That Have Ever Been. We Are Facing Total Thermonuclear Destruction; And, If You Can Make Someone Believe In A Ghost Or A Demon Or A Vampire In The Face Of That, You Are Doing Well. From My Own Personal Point Of View, I Don't Think Just Blood And Guts Is Enough. At Least, It Isn't For Me. Maybe It Will Turn Someone's Stomach; But, I'm Not Sure That Is Literature Or Even Entertainment.

I've Said It Before, And I'll Say It Again. When You Find Something At Which You Have Talent, You Do That Thing (what Ever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Pop Out Of Your Head.

I Want To Write About Spiders. To Me, This Is The One Theme That Cuts Right Across And Scares Just About Everybody. Spiders, To Me, Are Just About The Most Horrible, Awful Things That I Can Think About. I Think Everyone Is Afraid Of Spiders.

Only God Gets Things Right The First Time.

The Most Important Things To Remember About Back Story Are That (a) Everyone Has A History And (b) Most Of It Isn’t Very Interesting.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story.... Writing Is Seduction. Good Talk Is Part Of Seduction.

Even At Eleven, He Had Observed That Things Turned Out Right A Ridiculous Amount Of The Time.

I Choose To Believe In God, But I Have Serious Doubts.

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

How Many Times, Over How Many Years, Had He—a Grown Man—asked For The Mercy Of Another Chance? He Was Suddenly So Sick Of Himself, So Revolted, That He Could Have Groaned Aloud.

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!

You Know, Small Children Take It As A Matter Of Course That Things Will Change Every Day And Grown-ups Understand That Things Change Sooner Or Later And Their Job Is To Keep Them From Changing As Long As Possible. It’s Only Kids In High School Who Are Convinced They’re Never Going To Change. There’s Always Going To Be A Pep Rally And There’s Always Going To Be A Spectator Bus, Somewhere Out There In Their Future.

Perfect Paranoia Is Perfect Awareness.

I've Put Men To Death-men With Supposedly Immortal Souls-that Looked Dumber Than That Mouse

Because Who Would Ever Want To Get Close To Another Person If They Knew How Hard The Letting-go Part Was? In Your Heart They Only Die A Little At A Time, Don't They? Like A Plant When You Go Away On A Trip And Forget To Ask A Neighbor To Poke In Once In Awhile With The Old Watering-can, And Its So Sad—

Writing Is Seduction. Good Talk Is Part Of Seduction. If Not So, Why Do So Many Couples Who Start The Evening At Dinner Wind Up In Bed?

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.

Friends Come In And Out Of Our Lives, Like Busboys In A Restaurant.

I Tend To Scare Myself.

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?

Talent Renders The Whole Idea Of Rehearsal Meaningless; When You Find Something At Which You Are Talented, You Do It (whatever It Is) Until Your Fingers Bleed Or Your Eyes Are Ready To Fall Out Of Your Head. Even When No One Is Listening (or Reading Or Watching), Every Outing Is A Bravura Performance, Because You As The Creator Are Happy. Perhaps Even Ecstatic.

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

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

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?

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

I've Always Believed In God. I Also Think That's The Sort Of Thing That Either Comes As Part Of The Equipment, The Capacity To Believe, Or At Some Point In Your Life, When You're In A Position Where You Actually Need Help From A Power Greater Than Yourself, You Simply Make An Agreement.

"am I Weird?" "yeah. But So What? Everybody's Weird."

Read A Lot, Write A Lot Is The Great Commandment.

A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

I Think That Marijuana Should Not Only Be Legal, I Think It Should Be A Cottage Industry. It Would Be Wonderful For The State Of Maine. There's Some Pretty Good Homegrown Dope. I'm Sure It Would Be Even Better If You Could Grow It With Fertilizers And Have Greenhouses.

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 When There Are Enough Outsiders Together In One Place, A Mystic Osmosis Takes Place And You're Inside.

You'll Consider What You Did Wrong & Bookend Your Reflections With Hunger - No Supper, No Breakfast.

What I Tell Kids Is Don't Get Mad (about Censorship) Get Even. Run, Don't Walk, To The First Library You Can Find, And Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Eyes. Read What They're Trying To Keep Out Of Your Brains. Because That's Exactly What You Need To Know.

What We Like To Think Of Ourselves And What We Really Are Rarely Have Much In Common.

We'll Just Have To Get Along. That's What People Do, You Know? They Just Get Along. And Try To Help Each Other.

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.

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

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.

If You Can Remember All The Accessories That Go With Your Best Outfit, The Contents Of Your Purse, The Starting Lineup Of The New York Yankees Or The Houston Oilers, Or What Label "hang On Sloopy" By The Mccoys Was On, You Are Capable Of Remembering The Differences Between A Gerund (verb Form Used As A Noun) And A Participle (verb Form Used As An Adjective).

Of All The Questions I'm Asked, The Most Difficult Is, "how Does It Feel To Be Famous?" Since I'm Not, That Question Always Catches Me With A Feeling Of Surrealism....i've Got Three Kids And I've Changed All Their Diapers, And When It's Two O'clock In The Morning And You're Changing Something That's Sort Of Special Delivery With One Eye Open And One Eye Shut You Don't Feel Famous.

It's Up To Men To Build Things ... It's Up To God To Blow Them Down.

Stop Now Before I Kill You A Word To The Wise From Your Friend Pennywise

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.

God Is Cruel. Sometimes He Makes You Live.

If It's Ok To Register Cars And License Drivers, Why Is It Not Ok To Impose Similar Legal Responsibilities On Gun Owners?

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

You Want To Remember That While You're Judging The Book, The Book Is Also Judging You.

In The End We Are All Caught In Devices Of Our Own Making. I Believe That. In The End We Are All Caught.

The Muses Are Ghosts, And Sometimes They Come Uninvited.

The Town Has A Sense, Not Of History, But Of Time, And The Telephone Poles Seem To Know This. If You Lay Your Hand Against One, You Can Feel The Vibration From The Wires Deep Within The Wood, As If Souls Had Been Imprisoned In There And Were Struggling To Get Out.

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

I Can't Understand Why People Use Religion To Hurt Each Other When There's Already So Much Pain In The World.

I Think What You Do Is, You Keep Your Sensors Open. And It's - The More That You Do The Job, The More You Come To Understand In A Kind Of Intuitive Way That You're Always - You Know, Your Radar Is On. And The Thing Is Going Around And Around And Around. And It's Not Picking Up Any Blips.

In Spite Of The Problems He Was Having He Was Going On With His Life. There Are Thousands Who Don’t Or Won’t Or Can’t And Plenty Of Them Aren’t In Prison Either.

It Hurts To Imagine Stuff. It Can Give You A Headache. Probably Doesn't Hurt Physically, But It Hurts Mentally. But The More That You Can Do It, The More You're Able To Get Out Of It. Everybody Has That Capacity, But I Don't Think Everyone Develops It.

It's Not The Pain I'm Afraid Of; I Know About The Pain. What I'm Afraid Of Is The End Of This Small, Sweet Dream.

Even People Capable Of Living In The Past Don't Really Know What The Future Holds.

But Who Can Foresee Such Things? None Of Us Can Predict The Final Outcomes Of Our Actions, And Few Of Us Even Try; Most Of Us Just Do What We Do To Prolong A Moment's Pleasure Or To Stop The Pain. And Even When We Act For The Noblest Reasons, The Last Link Of The Chain All Too Often Drips With Someone's Blood.

A Child Blind From Birth Doesn't Even Know He's Blind Until Someone Tells Him. Even Then He Has Only The Most Academic Idea Of What Blindness Is; Only The Formerly Sighted Have A Real Grip On The Thing. Ben Hanscom Had No Sense Of Being Lonely Because He Had Never Been Anything But. If The Condition Had Been New, Or More Localized, He Might Have Understood, But Loneliness Both Encompassed His Life And Overreached It.

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.

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

Too Often, In Novels That Are Speculative, God Is A Kind Of Kryptonite, And That's About All That It Is, And It Goes Back To Dracula, Where Someone Dumps A Crucifix In Count Dracula's Face, And He Pulls Away And Runs Back Into His House. That's Not Religion. That's Some Kind Of Juju, Like A Talisman.

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.

Put An Egg In Your Shoe And Beat It, Make Like A Tree And Leave, Imitate An Amoeba And Split.

After The 9/11 Apocalypse Happened In New York City, People, Particularly New Yorkers, Who Breathed In The Ash, Or Saw The Results Of That, Have A Tendency To Keep Seeing Echoes And Having Flashbacks To It.

Trending Author

Stokely Carmichael

Salmon P. Chase

Category