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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.

-Stephen King

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These Self-appointed Deacons In

Stephen King

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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.

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Panic Is Highly Contagious, Especially In Situations When Nothing Is Known And Everything Is In Flux.

The Advantage Of Horror Books Is To Take The Reader And Cut Him Out Of The Pack And Work On Him One On One. It Has Its Advantages Because The People That Are There In The Movie Theater Really Are A Mob. If You Get One Guy Alone You Can Do A More Efficient Job Of Scaring Him.

Sooner Or Later Even The Fastest Runners Have To Stand And Fight.

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.

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.

I Am Always Chilled And Astonished By The Would-be Writers Who Ask Me For Advice And Admit, Quite Blithely, That They "don't Have Time To Read." This Is Like A Guy Starting Up Mount Everest Saying That He Didn't Have Time To Buy Any Rope Or Pitons.

You Must Not Come Lightly To The Blank Page.

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

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

Fighting For Peace, Is Like F***ing For Chastity

We Live In A Society Now Where The Sexual Taboo For Children Has Really Passed By The Wayside. Any Nineyear-old Can Go Into A 7-11 And Check Out The Playmate Of The Month, But You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Death. You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Disfigurement. You Don't Want 'em To Know About Creepy Things Because It Might Warp Their Little Minds.

If There's One American Belief I Hold Above All Others, It's That Those Who Would Set Themselves Up In Judgment On Matters Of What Is "right" And What Is "best" Should Be Given No Rest; That They Should Have To Defend Their Behavior Most Stringently. ... As A Nation, We've Been Through Too Many Fights To Preserve Our Rights Of Free Thought To Let Them Go Just Because Some Prude With A Highlighter Doesn't Approve Of Them

How Does It Happen That A Writer Who's Not Even Very Good - And I Can Say That, I've Read Four Or Five Of His Books - Gets To Be In Charge Of The World's Destiny? Or Of The Entire Universe's?" If He's Not Very Good, Why Didn't You Stop At One?" Mrs. Tassenbaum Smiled. "touché. He Is Readable, I'll Give Him That - Tells A Good Story.

I Don't Mean That Creative People Are Somehow Finer, Or More Sensitive, And Thus Have Finer, More Sensitive Nervous Breakdowns - You Can Save That Horseshit For The Sylvia Plath Worshipers. It's Just That Creative People Have Creative Breakdowns.

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?

You Learned To Accept, Or You Ended Up In A Small Room Writing Letters Home With Crayolas.

Say What You Mean. Say What You See. Make A Photograph, If You Can, For The Reader.

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.

The Scholar's Greatest Weakness: Calling Procrastination Research.

Procrastination

There’s Always Someone Who Knows Something.

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.

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.

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.

A Broken Spoon May Be A Fork In Disguise.

If Anyone Ever Asks You What Panic Is, Now You Can Tell Them: An Emotional Blank Spot That Leaves You Feeling As If You've Been Sucking On A Mouthful Of Pennies.

When A Man Has Died, He Wants You To Know About It.

A Marriage Was Like A House Under Constant Construction, Each Year Seeing The Completion Of New Rooms. A First-year Marriage Was A Cottage; One That Had Gone On For Twenty-seven Years Was A Huge And Rambling Mansion. There Were Bound To Be Crannies And Storage Spaces, Most Of Them Dusty And Abandoned, Some Containing A Few Unpleasant Relics You Would Just As Soon You Hadn't Found. But That Was No Biggie. You Either Threw Those Relics Out Or Took Them To Goodwill.

What Is Writing? Writing Is Telepathy.

Resistance To Change Is Proportional To How Much The Future Might Be Altered By Any Given Act.

He Sat Upon His Throne, Which Is Made Of Skulls.

The Brain Is A Muscle That Can Move The World.

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

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

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.

To Write Is Human, To Edit Is Divine.

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.

Love Among The Ruins... I'll Tell You Something, My Friend: Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

Homesickness Is Not Always A Vague, Nostalgic, Almost Beautiful Emotion, Although That Is Somehow The Way We Always Seem To Picture It In Our Mind. It Can Be A Terribly Keen Blade, Not Just A Sickness In Metaphor But In Fact As Well. It Can Change The Way One Looks At The World; The Faces One Sees In The Street Look Not Just Indifferent But Ugly... Perhaps Even Malignant. Homesickness Is A Real Sickness--the Ache Of The Uprooted Plant.

Take The Dead From The Dead, The Old Proverb Said; Only A Corpse May Speak True Prophecy.

If You Want To Be A Writer, You Must Do Two Things Above All Others: Read A Lot And Write A Lot. There's No Way Around These Two Things That I'm Aware Of, No Shortcut.

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

Time Apparently Did Nothing But Blunt Grief’s Sharpest Edge So That It Hacked Rather Than Sliced.

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.

I Think A Lot Of Times Dreams Are Nothing More Than A Kind Of Mental Or Spiritual Flatulence. They're A Way Of Relieving Pressure.

The Woman Had Looked Into The Abyss And Then Walked Out Across 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.

Life Was A Wheel, Its Only Job Was To Turn, And It Always Came Back To Where It Started.

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

I Think Most Of Us Are Fascinated By The Macabre And By The Weird And Even The Nastiness That Comes Along.

I Understand From My Own Work That Haste Makes Waste. But I Also Understand That ... The Creative Spark Dims, And Then Death Puts It Out. William Shakespeare, For Instance, Hasn’t Produced A New Play For 400 Years. That, My Friends, Is A Long Dry Spell.

Haste Makes Waste

Good Writing Is Often About Letting Go Of Fear And Affectation. Affectation Itself, Beginning With The Need To Define Some Sorts Of Writing As 'good' And Other Sorts As 'bad' Is Fearful Behavior.

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.

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.

Mister, We Deal In Lead.

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

I Can See Your Dirtypillows.

And Then Woe Is You, Pauly. Woe To The Max.

It's How We See The World That Keeps The Darkness Beyond At Bay. Keeps It From Pouring Through And Devouring Us. I Think All Of Us Might Know That, Way Down Deep.

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.

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

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

This Is A Dreadful Thing To Say, But I Have Wondered In My Darker Hours That, If Everything Were Legal, Wouldn't It Be Kind Of A Darwinian Solution To A Lot Of Problems? Who Are The Bikies That You See Who Are Cruisin' Around With No Helmet Or With A Hat Turned Around Like That Yoyo In Cheap Trick? They're Dummies, And If They Splatter Their Brains All Over The Sidewalk, They're Not Going To Be Collecting Food Stamps.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Time Slowed And Reality Bent; On And On The Eggman Went.

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

Every Liberal In The Country Must Watch Fox News For One Year, And Every Conservative In The Country Must Watch Msnbc For One Year. (middle-of-the-roaders Could Stick With Csi)

One Only Wishes Wayne Lapierre And His Nra Board Of Directors Could Be Drafted To Some Of These Scenes, Where They Would Be Required To Put On Booties And Rubber Gloves And Help Clean Up The Blood, The Brains, And The Chunks Of Intestine Still Containing The Poor Wads Of Half-digested Food That Were Some Innocent Bystander's Last Meal.

I Still Think That Of All The People Doing Top Fiction Today, John D. Macdonald Is The Best.he Was My Model As A Kid. If There Are People Out There That Want To Write, All You Need To Do Is Read 20 Of His Stories To Get An Idea What It Takes To Make A Story Kick Over.

Wendy? Darling? Light, Of My Life. I'm Not Gonna Hurt Ya. I'm Just Going To Bash Your Brains In.

Tell Him He's Wrong. Tell Him That Even If He's Right About Waiting, He's Right For The Wrong Reasons, And That Makes Him All The Way Wrong.

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

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.

Pray For Rain All You Like, But Dig A Well As You Do It.

And The Most Terrifying Question Of All May Be Just How Much Horror The Human Mind Can Stand And Still Maintain A Wakeful, Staring, Unrelenting Sanity.

Let The Word And The Legend Go Before You. Let The World Go Before You. Let Your Shadow Grow. Let It Grow Hair On Its Face. Let It Become Dark. Given Time, Words May Even Enchant An Enchanter.

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.

It Would Perhaps Not Be Amiss To Point Out That He Had Always Tried To Be A Good Dog. He Had Tried To Do All The Things His Man And His Woman, And Most Of All His Boy, Had Asked Or Expected Of Him. He Would Have Died For Them, If That Had Been Required. He Had Never Wanted To Kill Anybody. He Had Been Struck By Something, Possibly Destiny, Or Fate, Or Only A Degenerative Nerve Disease Called Rabies. Free Will Was Not A Factor.

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

We All Do What We Can, And It Has To Be Good Enough, And If It Isn't Good Enough, It Has To Do.

When The Dawn Was Still Long Hours Away, Bad Thoughts Took On Flesh And Began To Walk. In The Middle Of The Night Thoughts Became Zombies.

Nobody Likes A Clown At Midnight

Only God Gets Things Right The First Time.

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

Pray For Rain While Digging A Well.

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.

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.

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

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

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs.

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

Fantasy And Reality

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

A Dimwit Thinks Nothing Is Funny Unless It's Mean.

Paul Edgecomb: What Do You Want Me To Do John? I'll Do It. You Want Me To Let You Walk Out Of Here And See How Far You Get? John Coffey: Now Why Would You Want To Do A Foolish Thing Like That? Paul Edgecomb: When I Die And I Stand Before God Awaiting Judgment And He Asks Me Why I Let One Of His Miracles Die, What Am I Gonna Say, That It Was My Job?

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.

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

I Wanted To Write A Balls-to-the-wall Supernatural Horror Story, Something I Haven't Done In A Long Time.

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.

Writing Is Like A Little Hole In Reality That You Can Go Through And You Can Get Out And You Can Be Someplace Else For A While.

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.

My Mother Was A Reader, And She Read To Us. She Read Us Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde When I Was Six And My Brother Was Eight; I Never Forgot It.

The Past Is Obdurate. It Doesn't Want To Change.

Maybe There's A Whole Other Universe Where A Square Moon Rises In The Sky, And The Stars Laugh In Cold Voices, And Some Of The Triangles Have Four Sides, And Some Have Five, And Some Have Five Raised To The Fifth Power Of Sides. In This Universe There Might Grow Roses Which Sing. Everything Leads To Everything.

Don't Give Me What I Ask For, Give Me What I Need.

Why Don't We All Just Go Crazy When We Know Were Going To Croak? Because The Mind's A Monkey. You Put Things In Departments And You Go Ahead. You Go On And Plan For The Future And Assume That The Future's Going To Work Out Okay. Yet We Know That Sooner Or Later We're All Going To Be Eating Worms, Whether It's Fifty Years Or Sixty. It Might Be Tomorrow. It Might Happen Today.

I Think Everybody Has Experiences From Time To Time They Can't Explain. They Are Peculiarities. Usually We Just Dismiss Them Because They Are Uncomfortable To Think About.

A Scary Movie Puts A Lot Of People, A Mob, In One Place. There Are Advantages To That Because The Panic Runs Through The Audience. If It's A Good Movie, The Fear Jumps From One Person To The Next. You Can Find Yourself Screaming Just Because Everybody Around You Is Screaming. There's A Real Atmosphere Of Terror. It's Also Visual, Which Means That You Can't Look Away From This Thing - It's Happening. You're In The Dark. It's Like A Nightmare. It's Like A Dream. It's Very, Very Visual. It Works On All Those Levels.

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.

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

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

Strong Delusions Travel Like Cold Germs On A Sneeze.

Only Children Tell The Whole Truth, You Know. That's What Makes Them Children.

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.

You Cannot Condemn A Man For What May Only Be A Figment Of Your Own Imagination.

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.

Home Is Watching The Moon Rise Over The Open, Sleeping Land And Having Someone You Can Call To The Window, So You Can Look Together. Home Is Where You Dance With Others, And Dancing Is Life.

Art Should Be A Place Of Hope.

Money Can't Buy Off The Lightning.

When The Time Is Gone, You Can Never Get It Back.

I Think It's Relatively Easy For People To Accept Something Like Telepathy Or Precognition Or Teleplasm Because Their Willingness To Believe Doesn't Cost Them Anything. It Doesn't Keep Them Awake Nights. But The Idea That The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them Is Unsettling.

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.

Life Turns On A Dime.

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

Writing Fiction, Especially A Long Work Of Fiction, Can Be A Difficult, Lonely Job; It's Like Crossing The Atlantic Ocean In A Bathtub. There's Plenty Of Opportunity For Self-doubt.

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

I Hope You Liked Them, Reader; That They Did For You What Any Good Story Should Do--make You Forget The Real Stuff Weighing On Your Mind For A Little While And Take You Away To A Place You've Never Been. It's The Most Amiable Sort Of Magic I Know.

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

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

Successful Rebellions Always Begin In Secret.

I Am Religious In The Sense That I Believe In God And I Believe That There Is An Abiding Logical Spirit That Controls What Goes On To A Certain Extent.

The Wind Makes You Ache Is Some Place That Is Deeper Than Your Bones. It May Be That It Touches Something Old In The Human Soul, A Chord Of Race Memory That Says Migrate Or Die - Migrate Or Die.

I Wasn't A Social Drinker. I Used To Say That I Didn't Want To Go To Bars Because They Were Full Of Assholes Like Me.

Weird Love's Better Than No Love At All.

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

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

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

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.

I Write To Find Out What I Think.

Bad Chances Were Better Than No Chances.

How Much Courage Does It Take To Fire Up Your Tractor And Plow Under A Crop You Spent Six Or Seven Years Growing? How Much Courage To Go On And Do That After You've Spent All That Time Finding Out How To Prepare The Soil And When To Plant And How Much To Water And When To Reap? How Much To Just Say, "i Have To Quit These Peas. Peas Are No Good For Me, I Better Try Corn Or Beans.

The Real Importance Of Reading Is That It Creates An Ease & Intimacy With The Process Of Writing... It Also Offers You A Constantly Growing Knowledge Of What Has Been Done And What Hasn't, What Is Trite And What Is Fresh, What Works And What Lies There Dying (or Dead) On The Page. The More You Read, The Less Apt You Are To Make A Fool Of Yourself With Your Pen Or Word Processor.

Hapscomb's Texaco Sat On Number 93 Just North Of Arnette, A Pissant Four-street Burg About 110 Miles From Houston.

You’d Be Surprised What A Person Can Live With,” Dan Said.

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

Practice Is Invaluable... Honesty Is Indispensable.

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.

Go Then, There Are Other Worlds Than These.

I’m So Afraid That All I Can Reach Will Lead Me To All I Dare Not See.

It’s Hard To Let Go. Even When What You’re Holding Onto Is Full Of Thorns, It’s Hard To Let Go. Maybe Especially Then.

Talent Is A Dreadfully Cheap Commodity, Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work And Study; A Constant Process Of Honing. Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

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.

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.

The Harder You Had To Work To Open A Package, The Less You Ended Up Caring About What Was Inside.

Anger Is The Most Useless Emotion," Henchick Intoned, "destructive To The Mind And Hurtful To The Heart.

Faith Is A Great Thing, And Really Religious People Would Like Us To Believe That Faith And Knowing Are The Same Thing, But I Don't Believe That Myself. Because There Are Too Many Different Ideas On The Subject. What We Know Is This: When We Die, One Of Two Things Happens. Either Our Souls And Thoughts Somehow Survive The Experience Of Dying Or They Don't. If They Do, That Opens Up Every Possibility You Could Think Of. If They Don't, It's Just Blotto. The End.

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

In Many Cases When A Reader Puts A Story Aside Because It 'got Boring,' The Boredom Arose Because The Writer Grew Enchanted With His Powers Of Description And Lost Sight Of His Priority, Which Is To Keep The Ball Rolling.

I Don't Have Nightmares; I Give Them All To You.

If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

Sure, We Need The Gypsies. We Always Have. Because If You Don't Have Someone To Run Out Of Town Once In A While, How Are You Going To Know You Yourself Belong There?

If I Can Get It Down On Paper Without Puking All Over The Word Processor, Then As Far As I'm Concerned, It's Fit To See The Light Of Day.

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

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.

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.

... Suicide Gets In The Air Sometimes. Like A Cold Germ.

And You May Make Revelations That Cost You Dearly Only To Have People Look At You In A Funny Way, Not Understanding What You've Said At All, Or Why You Thought It Was So Important That You Almost Cried While You Were Saying It.

There Are All Sorts Of Theories And Ideas About What Constitutes A Good Opening Line. It's Tricky Thing, And Tough To Talk About Because I Don't Think Conceptually While I Work On A First Draft -- I Just Write. To Get Scientific About It Is A Little Like Trying To Catch Moonbeams In A Jar. 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.

The Town Kept Its Secrets, And The Marsten House Brooded Over It Like A Ruined King.

I Recognize Terror As The Finest Emotion And So I Will Try To Terrorize The Reader. But If I Find That I Cannot Terrify, I Will Try To Horrify, And If I Find That I Cannot Horrify, I'll Go For The Gross-out. I'm Not Proud.

The Man In Black Travels With Your Soul In His Pocket.

...maybe The World Needs A Cadre Of Smartasses To Liven Things Up, Who Knows?

I Don't Really Map Anything Out. I Just Let It Happen [while Writing]. But Once It Happens, It's Always There. If It's Laid, It's Played. If I Get To Page 300 And It's Not Working, I Junk It.

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

The Three Is Really Wonderful. A Mix Of Michael Crichton And Shirley Jackson, Hard To Put Down And Vastly Entertaining.

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.

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.

A Slice Of Pie Without Cheese Is Like A Kiss Without A Squeeze.

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

Good Books Don't Give Up All Their Secrets At Once.

Listening To It Was Like Having A Mud-slimed Piece Of Silk Drawn Lightly Back And Forth Across Her Face.

Death Was No Less A Miracle Than Birth.

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?

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).

When You Start, It's Very Cold, An Impossible Task. But Then Maybe The Characters Start To Take On A Little Bit Of Life, Or The Story Takes A Turn That You Don't Expect ... With Me That Happens A Lot Because I Don't Outline, I Just Have A Vague Notion. So It's Always Felt Like Less Of A Made Thing And More Of A Found Thing. That's Exciting. That's A Thrill.

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

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.

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

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.

Families, When A Child Is Born Want It To Be Intelligent. I, Through Intelligence, Having Wrecked My Whole Life, Only Hope The Baby Will Prove Ignorant And Stupid. Then He Will Crown A Tranquil Life By Becoming A Cabinet Minister.

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."

I Know Life Is Hard, I Think Everyone Knows That In Their Hearts, But Why Dos It Have To Be Cruel, As Well? Why Does It Have To Bite?

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

Want To Know The Best Thing About Teaching? Seeing That Moment When A Kid Discovers His Or Her Gift. There's No Feeling On Earth Like It.

Speaking Personally, You Can Have My Gun, But You'll Take My Book When You Pry My Cold, Dead Fingers Off Of The Binding.

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Marian McPartland

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