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This Is Probably The Single Great Subject Of Horror Fiction: Our Need To Cope With A Mystery That Can Be Understood Only With The Aid Of A Helpful Imagination.

-Stephen King

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This Is Probably The

Stephen King

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This Is Probably The Single Great Subject Of Horror Fiction: Our Need To Cope With A Mystery That Can Be Understood Only With The Aid Of A Helpful Imagination.

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Nothing Is Ever Lost, Sarah. Nothing That Can't Be Found.

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

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

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

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

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.

The World Had Moved On And All That Was Over, Done Before Fairly Begun.

Do It For Joy And You Can Do It Forever

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

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

Our Time Here Is Brief, Our Risk Enormous. Don't Waste The One Or Increase The Other, If You Please.

I Looked At The Ceiling And Wished This Life Was Over. This Unhappy Life That Had Started Out So Confidently. I Thought I Would Sleep No More That Night But Eventually I Did. In The End We Always Wear Out Our Worries. That's What Wire Man Says.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Have The World's Best Job. I Get Paid To Hang Out In My Imagination All Day.

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.

Thin Clouds Form, And The Shadows Lengthen Out. They Have No Breadth, As Summer Shadows Have; There Are No Leaves On The Trees Or Fat Clouds In The Sky To Make Them Thick. They Are Gaunt, Mean Shadows That Bite The Ground Like Teeth. As The Sun Nears The Horizon, Its Benevolent Yellow Begins To Deepen, To Become Infected, Until It Glares An Angry Inflamed Orange. It Throws A Variegated Glow Over The Horizon.

Sometimes Human Places, Create Inhuman Monsters.

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.

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

I Choose To Believe In God Because It Makes Things Better.

Lawyers Are Fleas On The Hide Of Human Nature.

She Can't Help It,' He Said. 'she's Got The Soul Of A Poet And The Emotional Makeup Of A Junkyard Dog.

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

You Cannot Hope To Sweep Someone Else Away By The Force Of Your Writing Until It Has Been Done To You.

And All That Weirdness Isn't Just Going On Outside. It's In You Too, Right Now, Growing In The Dark Like Magic Mushrooms. Call It The Thing In The Cellar. Call It The Blow Lunch Factor. Call It The Loony Tunes File. I Think Of It As My Private Dinosaur, Huge, Slimy, And Mindless, Stumbling Around In The Stinking Swamp Of My Subconscious, Never Finding A Tar Pit Big Enough To Hold It.

Writers Are Often The Worst Judges Of What They Have Written.

That's The Day's Business. Thinking. Thinking And Isolation, Because It Doesn't Matter If You Pass The Time Of Day With Someone Or Not; In The End, You're Alone. He Seemed To Have Put In As Many Miles In His Brain As He Had With His Feet. The Thoughts Kept Coming And There Was No Way To Deny Them.

The Most Important Things Are The Hardest Things To Say. They Are The Things You Get Ashamed Of, Because Words Diminish Them - Words Shrink Things That Seemed Limitless When They Were In Your Head To No More Than Living Size When They're Brought Out.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Was Built With A Love Of The Night And The Unquiet Coffin.

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

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).

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

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!

If You Have Given Up Your Heart ... You Have Already Lost. A Heartless Creature Is A Loveless Creature, And A Loveless Creature Is A Beast.

The Movies Have Never Been A Big Deal To Me. The Movies Are The Movies. They Just Make Them. If They're Good, That's Terrific. If They're Not, They're Not. But I See Them As A Lesser Medium Than Fiction, Than Literature, And A More Ephemeral Medium.

Want A Coke?” Abra Asked. “sugar Solves Lots Of Problems, That’s What I Think.

Without Story Books Is Like A Person With No Soul.

... Don't Let Your Elders And Supposed Betters Tell You Any Different. Sure, You've Never Been To Paris. No, You Never Ran With The Bulls At Pamploma. Yes, You're A Pissant Who Had No Hair In Your Armpits Until Three Years Ago - But So What? If You Don't Start Out Too Big For Your Britches, How Are You Gonna Fill 'em When You Grow Up? Let It Rip Regardless Of What Anybody Tells You, That's My Idea; Sit Down An Smoke That Baby.

Seven, Richie Thought. That's The Magic Number. There Has To Be Seven Of Us. That's The Way It's Supposed To Be.

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.

But I Believe In Love, You Know; Love Is A Uniquely Portable Magic. I Don’t Think It’s In The Stars, But I Do Believe That Blood Calls To Blood And Mind Calls To Mind And Heart To Heart.

I See Things, That's All. Write Enough Stories And Every Shadow On The Floor Looks Like A Footprint; Every Line In The Dirt Like A Secret Message.

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

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."

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.

Reading Is The Creative Center Of A Writer's Life." -

I Think There Ought To Be Some Serious Discussion By Smart People, Really Smart People, About Whether Or Not Proliferation Of Things Like The Smoking Gun And Tmz And Youtube And The Whole Celebrity Culture Is Healthy. 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. I Mean, I Know People Who Can Tell You Who Won The Last Four Seasons On American Idol And They Don't Know Who Their [bleeping] Representatives Are.

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.

Working With Him Was Sort Of Like Trying To Defuse A Bomb With Somebody Standing Behind You And Every Now And Then Clashing A Pair Of Cymbals Together. In A Word, Upsetting.

The Tears That Heal Are Also The Tears That Scald And Scourge.

Oh, There Were All Sorts Of Things To Wonder About, But The Truth Was Simple: Here Stood This Door Alone On An Endless Stretch Of Beach, And It Was For Only One Of Two Things: Opening Or Leaving Closed.

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.

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

So Okay - There You Are In Your Room With The Shade Down And The Door Shut And The Plug Pulled Out Of The Base Of The Telephone. You've Blown Up Your Tv And Committed Yourself To A Thousand Words A Day, Come Hell Or High Water. Now Comes The Big Question: What Are You Going To Write About? And The Equally Big Answer: Anything You Damn Well Want.

The Devil's Voice Is Sweet To Hear.

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?

It's The Pool Where We All Go Down To Drink, To Swim, To Catch A Little Fish From The Edge Of The Shore; It's Also The Pool Where Some Hardy Souls Go Out In Their Flimsy Wooden Boats After The Big Ones. It Is The Pool Of Life, The Cup Of Imagination, And She Has An Idea That Different People See Different Versions Of It, But With Two Things Ever In Common: It's Always About A Mile Deep In The Fairy Forest, And It's Always Sad. Because Imagination Isn't The Only Thing This Place Is About.

We Like To Think About How Smart We Are. But I Think Talent As A Writer Is Hard-wired In, It's All There, At Least The Basic Elements Of It. You Can't Change It Any More Than You Can Choose Whether To Be Right Handed Or Left Handed.

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.

Pride, That Invisible Bone That Keeps The Neck Stiff.

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.

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

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.

If You're Just Starting Out As A Writer, You Could Do Worse Than Strip Your Television's Electric Plug-wire, Wrap A Spike Around It, And Then Stick It Back Into The Wall. See What Blows, And How Far. Just An Idea.

The Man In Black Fled Across The Desert, And The Gunslinger Followed.

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.

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

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

And I Wonder If There Is Really Any Point To What I'm Doing, Or What I'm Supposed To Make Of A World Where A Man Can Get Rich Playing "let's Pretend

Wherever You Write Is Supposed To Be A Little Bit Of A Refuge, A Place Where You Can Get Away From The World. The More Closed In You Are, The More You're Forced Back On Your Own Imagination.

Any Parting Could Be Forever, And We Don't Know.

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

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.

That's The Curse Of The Reading Class. We Can Be Seduced By A Good Story Even At The Most Inopportune Moments.

He Thrusts His Fists Against The Posts And Still Insists He Sees The Ghosts.

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

True Friendship

So What, Ghosts Can't Hurt You. That's What I Thought Then.

Everybody Wants To Psychoanalyze Horror. They Don't Want To Psychoanalyze A Book Like Gay Talese's "sex With Your Neighbor" [sic] Or Something Like That. It's Pretty Much Accepted That Americans Should Be Interested In Who They're Diddling And How They're Doing It.

Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

Showrunning Is A Thing Where You Have To Work With Tons Of Different People. You Have To Schmooze People, You Have To Talk To Network People. I Don't Want To Do Any Of That.

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

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.

Not Writing Would Be Like Going The Rest Of Your Life Without Having Dreams.

It's A Tough Life If You Don't Weaken.

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 Know How Cruel Your God Can Be, David. How Fantastically Cruel?...sometimes He Makes Us Live.

I Think We'd All Like To Believe That After We Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil, That There's Going To Be Something On The Other Side Because For Most Of Us, I Know For Me, Life Is So Rich, So Colorful And Sensual And Full Of Good Things, Things To Read, Things To Eat, Things To Watch, Places To Go, New Experiences, That I Don't Want To Think That You Just Go To Darkness.

New Experiences

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.

You Are The Grim, Goal-oriented Ones Who Will Not Believe That The Joy Is In The Journey Rather Than The Destination No Matter How Many Times It Has Been Proven To You.

I Do Have One Slightly Crooked Wheel Upstairs, But Everything Else Is Ticking Along Just Four-o, Thank You Very Much.

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

I Can See Your Dirtypillows.

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

Like Some Dogs: Kick Them Once And They Never Trust You Again, No Matter How Nice You Are To Them.

Amateurs Sit And Wait For Inspiration, The Rest Of Us Just Get Up And Go To Work.

Procrastination

Cut Him. Cut Him While I Stand Here And Watch. I Want To See The Blood Flow. Don't Make Me Tell You Twice.

Close Your Eyes And Click Your Heals Three Times...because There's No Place Like Dome.

Dead Fields Under A November Sky, Scattered Rose Petals Brown And Turning Up At The Edges, Empty Pools Scummed With Algae, Rot, Decomposition, Dust.

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.

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

There's A Lot Of Things People Think They Can't Do And Then Discover They Can When They Find Themselves Tight-wired.

Nobody Likes To See A Stupid Guy Wise Up.

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

Wow. This Makes Grand Central Look Like A Bus Stop In Buttfuck Nebraska.

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.

Talent Is A Dull Knife That Will Cut Nothing Unless It Is Wielded With Great Force.

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

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

I Do Not Aim With My Hand; He Who Aims With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Aim With My Eye. I Do Not Shoot With My Hand; He Who Shoots With His Hand Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Shoot With My Mind. I Do Not Kill With My Gun; He Who Kills With His Gun Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father. I Kill With My Heart.

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.

Sorry Is The Kool-aid Of Human Emotions. It's What You Say When You Spill A Cup Of Coffee Or Throw A Gutter Ball When You're Bowling With The Girls In The League. True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

I Like To Think That Good People Win. But Even Good People Have Other Sides. Most People Will Slow Down To Get A Good Look At An Accident, Even Though They Won't Admit It.

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.

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

Understand Death? Sure. That Was When The Monsters Got You.

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

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

When It Comes To Horror There's A Strange Need To Analyze. When "evil Children" Fad Happened, There Was The Exorcist And The Other And The Omen. People Would Say, "what This Really Means Is That Americans Don't Want To Have Kids Anymore. They Feel Hostility Towards Their Own Children. They Feel They're Being Tied Down And Dragged Down." In Fact, In Most Cases, What Those Books Are About Is Nice Children Who Are Beset By Forces Beyond Their Control.

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.

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

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.

The Bad Ideas Kind Of Just Drop Out Of The Mix. You Forget About Them. The Good Ones Stick Around.

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

The First Thing Was To Get Down To Addie Richardson's Henhouse, And That Was A Goodish Way, Four Or Five Miles. She Found Herself Wondering If The Lord Was Going To Send Her An Eagle To Fly Her Those Four Miles, Or Send Elijah In His Fiery Chariot To Give Her A Lift. Blasphemy," She Told Herself Complacently. "the Lord Provides Strength, Not Taxicabs.

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.

There Are Things Of Such Darkness And Horror—just, I Suppose, As There Are Things Of Such Great Beauty—that They Will Not Fit Through The Puny Human Doors Of Perception.

I’m Not Particularly Keen On Writing Which Exhaustively Describes The Physical Characteristics Of The People In The Story And What They’re Wearing… I Can Always Get A J. Crew Catalogue… …so Spare Me, If You Please, The Hero’s ‘sharply Intelligent Blue Eyes’ And ‘outthrust Determined Chin’.

You Know," King Said, "i'm Not Much Good At Telling Stories. That Sounds Like A Paradox, But It's Not; It's The Reason I Write Them Down.

I've Always Thought It Would Be Fun To Update "hansel And Gretel." I'd Have These White Parents In The Suburbs With An Income Of Fifty Or Sixty Thousand Dollars. Daddy Loses His Job, And The Wicked Stepmother Says, "we Could Get Along, We Could Keep Our Mastercharge, If You'd Just Get Rid Of Those Shitty Kids." Finally The Father Hires A Limo And Tells The Driver, "drop 'em Off On Lenox Avenue In Harlem At Two In The Morning." These Two Little White Kids Land There. They're Menaced. And This Supposedly Nice Black Lady Says, "would You Like Some Candy?"

Clear Communication Between Selves - The Surface Self And The Deep Self - Is The Enemy Of Self-doubt. It Slays Confusion.

Carrie Was A Terrific Piece Of Work. At The End Of The Movie Comes, When Amy Irving Kneels Down To Put The Flowers On Carrie's Grave, A Hand Comes Up Through The Grave And Seizes Her By The Arm. The Audience Went To The Roof, Totally To The Roof. It Was Just The Most Amazing Reaction. And I Thought, 'we Have A Monster Hit On Our Hands. Brian De Palma Has Done Something New. He's Actually Created A Shock Ending That Shocks An Audience That Was Ready For A Horror Film.' And There Were Several People Who Did It After That.

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

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

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Smoke And A Story's Just A Story

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.

I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy.

Good Luck Is Just Bad Luck With Its Hair Combed.

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

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

It Means That No Blue Ribbon Is Forever. Someday - If The World Doesn't Explode Itself In The Meantime - Someone Will Run A Two-minute Mile In The Olympics. It May Take A Hundred Years Or A Thousand, But It Will Happen. Because There Is No Ultimate Blue Ribbon. There Is Zero, And There Is Eternity, And There Is Mortality, But There Is No Ultimate.

To Write Is Human, To Edit Is Divine.

Sometimes The Things Presented To Us As Choices Aren't Choices At All.

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

I Believe In Evil, But All My Life I've Gone Back And Forth About Whether Or Not There's An Outside Evil, Whether Or Not There's A Force In The World That Really Wants To Destroy Us, From The Inside Out, Individually And Collectively.

A Successful Novel Should Interrupt The Reader’s Life, Make Him Or Her Miss Appointments, Skip Meals, Forget To Walk The Dog.

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.

I've Met Talespinners Before, Jake, And They're All Cut More Or Less From The Same Cloth. They Tell Tales Because They're Afraid Of Life.

...belief Has A Second Edge. If There Are Ten Thousand Medieval Peasants Who Create Vampires By Believing Them Real, There May Be One - Probably A Child - Who Will Imagine The Stake Necessary To Kill It. But A Stake Is Only Stupid Wood; The Mind Is The Mallet Which Drives It Home.

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.

As Always At These Times When He Felt Really In Need Of God The Front Of His Mind Was Serene, But The Deeper Part, Where Faith Did Constant Battle With Doubt, Was Terrified That There Would Be No Answer.

All Is Forgotten In The Stone Halls Of The Dead. These Are The Rooms Of Ruin Where The Spiders Spin And The Great Circuits Fall Quiet, One By One.

As Far As Where I Go When I Die, The Concept That I Am Simple Going To Flick Out, Like A Light Bulb, To Me Is Not Only Spiritually Impossible To Believe, But Logically It Is Laughable - The Idea That We Simply Die And Nothing Happens.

The 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.

I Did Spend Years As An Addict, So I Know That World, Although I Wish I Didn't.

For Every Mother Who Ever Cursed God For Her Child Dead In The Road, For Every Father Who Ever Cursed The Man Who Sent Him Away From The Factory With No Job, For Every Child Who Was Ever Born To Pain And Asked Why, This Is The Answer. Our Lives Are Like These Things I Build. Sometimes They Fall Down For A Reason, Sometimes They Fall Down For No Reason At All.

Mister, We Deal In Lead.

When People Begin To Lose Hope, There's Bound To Be Explosions.

He Remembered Waking Up Once, Listening To The Wind, Thinking Of All The Dark And Rushing Cold Outside And All The Warmth Of This Bed, Filled With Their Peaceful Heat Under Two Quilts, And Wishing It Could Be Like This Forever.

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

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.

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

Pain Is The Biggest Power Of Love.

Reading Takes Time, And The Glass Teat Takes Too Much Of It.

By Tomorrow At This Time, I Think You're Going To Have A Much Better Idea Of What Crazy Is. -- Ev Hillman

And If There Are No Cars Or Planes, And If No One’s Uncle John Is Out In The Wood Lot West Of Town Banging Away At A Quail Or Pheasant; If The Only Sound Is The Slow Beat Of Your Own Heart, You Can Hear Another Sound, And That Is The Sound Of Life Winding Down To Its Cyclic Close, Waiting For The First Winter Snow To Perform Last Rites.

You Couldn't Not Like Someone Who Liked The Guitar.

We're All Going To Die; I'm Just Trying To Make It A Little More Interesting.

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

His Name Is Legion. He Is The King Of Nowhere.

We Don't Know The Days That Will Change Our Lives. Probably Just As Well.

One Night When My Longing For Her Was Like A Fire Burning Out Of Control In My Heart And My Head, I Wrote Her A Letter That Just Seemed To Go On And On. I Poured Out My Whole Heart In It, Never Looking Back To See What I'd Said Because I Was Afraid Cowardice Would Make Me Stop. I Didn't Stop, And When A Voice In My Head Clamored That It Would Be Madness To Mail Such A Letter, That I Would Be Giving Her My Naked Heart To Hold In Her Hand, I Ignored It With A Child's Breathless Disregard Of The Consequences.

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?

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?

Make-up Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It. You Prime A Pump With Your Own Water, You Work The Handle With Your Own Strength. You Do This Because You Expect To Get Back More Than You Give.

Acknowledge Your Good Fortune By Sharing It.

Nobody Likes A Clown At Midnight

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

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.

The Only [working] Ritual Is Making Tea. I Use The Loose Leaves And Drink It By The Gallon.

A Library Is A Place Where You Can Live A Thousand Lives. So Why Are You Waiting When You Could Be Living? Visit Your Library Today.

But See That You Get On. That's Your Job In This Hard World, To Keep Your Love Alive And See That You Get On, No Matter What. Pull Your Act Together And Just Go On.

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.

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.

It's Dialogue That Gives Your Cast Their Voices, And Is Crucial In Defining Their Characters.

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.

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.

The Loss Of Memory Isn't Always The Problem; Sometimes--maybe Even Often--it's The Solution.

He Had A Massive Stroke. He Died With His Tie On. Do You Think That Could Be Our Generation's Equivalent Of That Old Saying About Dying With Your Boots On?

I Hold To No God," Roland Said. "i Hold To The Tower, And Won't Pray To That.

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