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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.

-Stephen King

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When It Comes To

Stephen King

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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.

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Nightmares Exist Outside Of Logic, And There's Little Fun To Be Had In Explanations; They're Antithetical To The Poetry Of Fear.

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

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.

They Had Become A Fixed Star In The Shifting Firmament Of The High School's Relationships, The Acknowledged Romeo And Juliet. And She Knew With Sudden Hatefulness That There Was One Couple Like Them In Every White Suburban High School In America.

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

Bad Chances Were Better Than No Chances.

Crying Was Like Pissing Everything Out On The Ground.

They're Animals, All Right. But Why Are You So Goddam Sure That Makes Us Human Beings?

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 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.

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.

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

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.

Teddy, Vern, Chris: I Don't Shut Up. I Grow Up. And When I Look At You, I Throw Up. Aghhh! Gordie: And Then Your Mom Goes Around The Corner And She Licks It Up.

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

A Person Could See A Lot Without Ever Leaving His Own Living Room. Especially If He Had The Right Tools.

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

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.

A Person's Memory Is Everything, Really. Memory Is Identity. It's You.

I Try To Create Sympathy For My Characters, Then Turn The Monsters Loose.

He Smiles A Lot. But I Think There Might Be Worms Inside Him Making Him Smile.

It Starts With This: Put Your Desk In The Corner, And Every Time You Sit Down There To Write, Remind Yourself Why It Isn't In The Middle Of The Room. Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

I Want To Engage The Reader. I'm An Emotional Writer, In The Sense That I Would Be Happy If You Re-read A Book For The Intellectual Or The Mental Part Of It, But, The First Time, I Just Like To Reach Out And Grab You, Pull You In.

When I Knew I Was Going To Be Able To Write Full Time, I Wondered, "what's Going To Happen To The Relationships Within My Family?" Are They Going To Change? Is It Going To Be The Kind Of Deal Where You Say, "i Can't Take This! Get Me Out Of Here! I Can't Stand These Screaming Kids!" The Way It Turned Out Was, I Was Able To Change The Diapers Okay, After I Stuck The Pin Through My Fingers A Few Times. I Had A Dawning Realization That Children Are Not Particularly Hard To Deal With.

Come On Back And We’ll See If You Remember The Simplest Thing Of All – How It Is To Be Children, Secure In Belief And Thus Afraid Of The Dark.

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

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

Kill If You Will, But Command Me Nothing!

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.

They Had Discovered One Could Grow As Hungry For Light As For Food.

If God Gives You Something You Can Do, Why In God's Name Wouldn't You Do It?

Time Takes It All, Whether You Want It To Or Not.

Do Any Of Us, Except In Our Dreams, Truly Expect To Be Reunited With Our Hearts' Deepest Loves, Even When They Leave Us Only For Minutes, And On The Most Mundane Of Errands? No, Not At All. Each Time They Go From Our Sight We In Our Secret Hearts Count Them As Dead. Having Been Given So Much, We Reason, How Could We Expect Not To Be Brought As Low As Lucifer For The Staggering Presumption Of Our Love?

There Is A Story In The Book Night Shift, Called 'the Mangler,' About A Laundry Machine That Takes On A Sort Of Malignant Life. I Worked In A Laundry For About A Year And A Half After I Got Out Of College. It Was The Only Job I Could Find To Support My Wife And Our First Child. There Was A Fellow There That Had No Hands Or Forearms. He Simply Had Hooks. This Is One Of The Things That They Don't Tell You About When You Become Management. You Have To Wear A Tie. It Was This Fellow's Tie That Did Him In.

When You Write A Story, You’re Telling Yourself The Story,” He Said. “when You Rewrite, Your Main Job Is Taking Out All The Things That Are Not The Story.

There Is No Such Thing As A Happy Ending. I Never Met A Single One To Equal "once Upon A Time.

Once Upon A Time

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

Tracking Account Planning Is Rather Like Counting A Mixed Batch Of Tropical Fish. You Think You See Patterns, But They've All Changed By The Time You've Finished Counting.

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.

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.

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

Paul Lepage Has Become A Terrible Embarrassment To The State I Live In And Love. If He Won't Govern, He Should Resign.

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?

Your First Impulse Is To Share Good News, Your Second Is To Club Someone With It.

And As A Writer, One Of The Things That I've Always Been Interested In Doing Is Actually Invading Your Comfort Space. Because That's What We're Supposed To Do. Get Under Your Skin, And Make You React.

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.

When You Put On A Clown Suit And A Rubber Nose, Nobody Has Any Idea What You Look Like Inside.

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

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.

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

He Had Never Been A Social Man. He Had Shunned Causes With Contempt And Disgust. They Were For Pig-simple Suckers And People With Too Much Time And Money On Their Hands.

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

Talent Is Cheaper Than Table Salt. What Separates The Talented Individual From The Successful One Is A Lot Of Hard Work.

Drive Away And Try To Keep Smiling. Get A Little Rock And Roll On The Radio And Go Toward Life With All The Courage You Can Find And All The Belief You Can Muster. Be True, Be Brave, Stand.

Whenever Anything Important Happens In America, They Have To Gold-plate It, Like Baby Shoes. That Way You Can Forget It.

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.

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.

It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair, It Was Not Fair. So Cried His Child's Heart, And Then His Child's Heart Died A Little. For That Is Also The Way Of The World.

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

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

Rewrite Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

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

I'm Still In Love With What I Do, With The Idea Of Making Things Up, So Hours When I Write Always Feel Like Very Blessed Hours To Me.

On That Gray Street, With The Smell Of Industrial Smokes In The Air And The Afternoon Bleeding Away To Evening, Downtown Derry Looked Only Marginally More Charming Than A Dead Hooker In A Church Pew.

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

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

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.

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

Without Story Books Is Like A Person With No Soul.

I Know I Can Do It," Todd Downey Said, Helping Himself To Another Ear Of Corn From The Steaming Bowl. "i'm Sure That In Time Her Death Will Be A Mystery, Even To Me.

There Will Be Water If God Wills It.

Memory Is The Basis Of Every Journey.

Few If Any Seemed To Have Grasped The Principle Of Reality; New Knowledge Leads Always To Yet More Awesome Mysteries. Greater Physiological Knowledge Of The Brain Makes The Existence Of The Soul Less Possible Yet More Probable By The Nature Of The Search.

I Was Sitting One Day And Thinking About Cannibalism, Because That's What Guys Like Me Do... And I Thought, Suppose A Guy Was Washed Up On A Rocky Island, How Much Of Himself Could He Eat?

I've Killed Enough Of The World's Trees.

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’.

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

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

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

Making People Believe The Unbelievable Is No Trick; It's Work... Belief And Reader Absorption Come In The Details: An Overturned Tricycle In The Gutter Of An Abandoned Neighborhood Can Stand For Everything.

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

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

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

All You Imagined, No Matter How Wild It Might Seem, Was No More Than A Disguised Version Of What You Already Knew.

And Poets, In My View, And I Think The View Of Most People, Do Speak God's Language - It's Better, It's Finer, It's Language On A Higher Plane Than Ordinary People Speak In Their Daily Lives.

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

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

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.

I Have To Remind Myself That Some Birds Aren’t Meant To Be Caged. Their Feathers Are Just Too Bright.

Any Thoughts Of Guilt, Any Feelings Of Regret, Had Faded. The Desert Had Baked Them Out.

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.

It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.

The Quiet, Singing Voice Of The Rose. The Song That Promised All Might Be Well, All Might Be Well, That All Manner Of Things Might Be Well.

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

I Was Being Paid To Do What I Loved, And There's No Gig On Earth Better Than That; It's Like A License To Steal.

I Got Letters From People That Have Had Peculiar Psychic Experiences, Experiences With The Dead - Sometimes Fairly Tranquil Experiences And Sometimes Very Terrifying Experiences. I Do Believe That A Lot Of Them Are Sincere. I Do Believe, Also, That Some Of Them May Be Misguided. But, I Think The Majority Of Them Have Experienced Something.

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.

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.

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.

You Discarded Most Of The Lies Along The Way But Held On To The One That Said Life Mattered.

Teaching School Is Like Having Jumper Cables Hooked To Your Brain, Draining All The Juice Out Of You.

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

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

I'm Not The First Person To Have Said This - No Writer Ever Feels That The Execution Of A Book Lives Up To The Idea For That Book. The Execution Always Falls Short.

I Never Met A Writer Who Wasn't Lazy.

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.

If You Wrote Something For Which Someone Sent You A Check, If You Cashed The Check And It Didn't Bounce, And If You Then Paid The Light Bill With The Money, I Consider You Talented.

I Didn't Want To Even Stand Next To Any High Rise Building As Long As I Lived... I Didn't Even Want To Go Over A Bridge.

The Beauty Of Religious Mania Is That It Has The Power To Explain Everything. Once God (or Satan) Is Accepted As The First Cause Of Everything Which Happens In The Mortal World, Nothing Is Left To Chance...logic Can Be Happily Tossed Out The Window.

There Seems To Be No Air In The Air She Breaths.

Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Writers Write. That's All It Is. It Is As Simple, And As Complex, As That.

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

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.

The Idea That The Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time. Substance Abusing Writers Are Just Substance Abusers — Common Garden Variety Drunks And Druggies, In Other Words. Any Claims That The Drugs And Alcohol Are Necessary To Dull A Finer Sensibility Are Just The Usual Self-serving Bullshit. I've Heard Alcoholic Snowplow Drivers Make The Same Claim, That They Drink To Still The Demons.

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

My Wife Has Told Me Since That I Was Hungover Every Mornng Until About Two In The Afternoon, And From Five Until Midnight I Was Drunk Out Of My Mind. So She Says There Was This Period Of About Three Hours When She Could Talk To Me Like A Rational Human Being.

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

But Sorry Is The Kool-aid Of Human Emotions. [...] True Sorrow Is As Rare As True Love.

And In Real Life Endings Aren't Always Neat, Whether They're Happy Endings, Or Whether They're Sad Endings.

It's A Mystery. That's The First Thing That Interests Me About The Idea Of God. If There Is One, It's Mysterious And Powerful And Awesome To Even Consider The Concept, And You Have To Take It Seriously.

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.

I Don't Ask Myself, "well, Does God Exist Or Does God Not Exist?" I Choose To Believe That God Exists, And Therefore I Can Say, "god, I Can't Do This By Myself. Help Me Not To Take A Drink Today. Help Me Not To Take A Drug Today." And That Works Fine For Me.

A Cat Won't Curry Favor Even If It's In Their Best Interests To Do So. A Cat Can't Be A Hypocrite. If More Preachers Were Like Cats, This Would Be A More Religious Country.

Whenever I Publish A Book, I Feel Like A Trapper Caught By The Iroquois. They're All Lined Up With Tomahawks, And The Idea Is To Run Through With Your Head Down, And Everybody Gets To Take A Swing. They Hit You In The Head, The Back, The Ass, And The Balls.

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

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

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

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.

Money Can't Buy Off The Lightning.

The Sandwich He Made Was Bologna And Cheese, His Favorite. All The Sandwiches He Made Were His Favorites; That Was One Of The Advantages Of Being Single.

The World Was The Overlook Hotel, Where The Party Never Ended. Where The Dead Were Alive Forever.

I Started To Submit When I Was Twelve, And Obviously At That Time They Weren't Good Enough, And I Suppose In My Heart Of Hearts I Knew It. But You Have To Start Sooner Or Later, You Have To Dig In.

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

Everyone Loves Something For Nothing...even If It Costs Everything.

Theres A Constant Struggle Going On About How Much Will Be Illegal And How Much You Will Be Free To Take. Can We Open The Pharmacies? Can We Put Valium And Percodan And Those Sorts Of Things Out On The Shelves? I Wouldn't Take It. I Don't Know.

Not Everybody Believes In Ghosts, But I Do. Do You Know What They Are, Trisha? She Had Shaken Her Head Slowly. Men And Women Who Can't Get Over Their Past . . . That's What Ghosts Are.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset. The Story Informs The Theme For Me Rather Than The Other Way Around. But As It Happens... This Is, At Least To A Degree, About Getting Old And The Rapid Passage Of Our Lives.

I Identify With The Characters Very Closely. At The Same Time That I`m Outside, Writing, I`m Also Inside, Experiencing, And It Can Be Very Unsettling.

It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces, And Makes Us Look Like Family.

Writing Is Like Being In A Dream State Or Under Self-directed Hypnosis. It Induces A State Of Recall That - While Not Perfect - Is Pretty Spooky.

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

Fantasy And Reality

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?

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

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.

I Have Grown Into A Bestsellasaurus Rex - A Big, Stumbling Book-beast That Is Loved When It Shits Money And Hated When It Tramples Houses... I Started Out As A Storyteller; Along The Way I Became An Economic Force.

Some Of This Book—perhaps Too Much—has Been About How I Learned To Do It. Much Of It Has Been About How You Can Do It Better. The Rest Of It—and Perhaps The Best Of It—is A Permission Slip: You Can, You Should, And If You're Brave Enough To Start, You Will. Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

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

...my Basic Belief About The Making Of Stories Is That They Pretty Much Make Themselves.

Only Two Things Happen To Writers When They Die: Either Their Work Survives, Or It Becomes Forgotten.

The Writer Must Have A Good Imagination To Begin With, But The Imagination Has To Be Muscular, Which Means It Must Be Exercised In A Disciplined Way, Day In And Day Out, By Writing, Failing, Succeeding And Revising.

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

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.

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

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

If You Can't Laugh When Things Go Bad--laugh And Put On A Little Carnival--then You're Either Dead Or Wishing You Were.

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

I Just Didn't Want Her To Get Hurt. I Thought She Was Going To Be. But Everyone Gets Their Share, Don't They? Sure. Pow, In The Nose. Pow, In The Eye. Pow, Below The Belt, Down You Go, And The Ref Just Went Out For A Hot Dog.

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

The World Had Teeth And It Could Bite You With Them Anytime It Wanted.

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.

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.

I Dreamed Of You. I Dreamed You Were Wandering In The Dark, And So Was I. We Found Each Other. We Found Each Other In The Dark.

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.

A Life Without Love Is Like A Tree Without Fruit.

Inspirational Love

As We Get Older, Our Fears, In Some Way, Sharpen And Become More Personal, Because We Can No Longer - Let's Say Take A Book Like "it" Or Maybe "christine," And Say These Are Make-believe Fears.

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

You Can Go Through Your Whole Life Telling Yourself That Life Is Logical, Life Is Prosaic, Life Is Sane. Above All Sane. And I Think It Is. I've Had A Lot Of Time To Think About That. And What I Keep Coming Back To Is [her] Dying Declaration: 'so You Understand That When We Increase The Number Of Variables, The Axioms Themselves Never Change.'

How To Draw A Picture (xii) Know When You're Finished, And When You Are, Put Your Pencil Or Your Paintbrush Down. All The Rest Is Only Life.

You See Something, Then It Clicks With Something Else, And It Will Make A Story. But You Never Know When It's Going To Happen.

Schizoid Behavior Is A Pretty Common Thing In Children. It's Accepted, Because All We Adults Have This Unspoken Agreement That Children Are Lunatics.

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

The First Movie I Can Remember Seeing Was The Creature From The Black Lagoon. And, I Can Remember Hearing A Radio Play Of Ray Bradbury's Mars Is Heaven. And When I Cut My Teeth On Comic Books, They Were Not The Easy Ones Of Today Like Spiderman, Superman And The Hulk. They Were Tales Of The Crypt, The Vaultkeeper, And That Sort Of Thing.

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.

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

Calling It A Simple Schoolgirl Crush Was Like Saying A Rolls-royce Was A Vehicle With Four Wheels, Something Like A Hay-wagon. She Did Not Giggle Wildly And Blush When She Saw Him, Nor Did She Chalk His Name On Trees Or Write It On The Walls Of The Kissing Bridge. She Simply Lived With His Face In Her Heart All The Time, A Kind Of Sweet, Hurtful Ache. She Would Have Died For Him.

As A Teenager, I Read A Lot Of H.p. Lovecraft, So I Wrote Like H.p. Lovecraft. And In My 20s, I Read A Lot Of Ross Macdonald And Raymond Chandler, So I Wrote Like Those Guys. But, Little By Little, You Develop Your Own Style.

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

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

A Person Who Doesn't Learn From The Past Is An Idiot, In My Estimation.

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 Think We Fought Vietnam For The Benefits Of Civilization, And Certainly We Fought It To Oppose Authority. To Show Our Authority, To Show We Weren't Weak. Isn't That What Nixon Kept Saying? "we Have To Show The World That We're Not Weak." So Of Course What We Ended Up Showing The World Was That We Were, Yep, Weak. 'cause We Couldn't Beat These Kids In Black Pajamas.

There's No Harm In Hoping For The Best As Long As You're Prepared For The Worst.

The Rope By Which The Great Blocks Of Taxes Are Attached To Any Citizenry Is Simple Loyalty.

I Do Believe That When We're In The Process Of Dying, That All These Emergency Circuits In The Brain Take Over. I Base What I'm Saying Not On Any Empirical Evidence. I Think It's Very Possible That When You're Dying, These Circuits Open Up, Which Would Explain This Whole White-light Phenomena - When People Clinically Die And They See Their Relatives And Stuff And Say, "hello, It's Great To See You."

Such An Ego Simply Forbade Certain Lines Of Thought.

I Find I'm So Excited I Can Barely Sit Still Or Hold A Thought In My Head. I Think It Is The Excitement Only A Free Man Can Feel, A Free Man At The Start Of A Long Journey Whose Conclusion Is Uncertain. I Hope I Can Make It Across The Border. I Hope To See My Friend, And Shake His Hand. I Hope The Pacific Is As Blue As It Has Been In My Dreams. I Hope.

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

Your Job Isn't To Find These Ideas But To Recognize Them When They Show Up.

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

It's Best To Be Ruthless With The Past.

Writing Good Dialogue Is Art As Well As Craft.

You Can't Polish A Turd.

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

So Where Do The Ideas-the Salable Ideas-come From? They Come From My Nightmares. Not The Night-time Variety, As A Rule, But The Ones That Hide Just Beyond The Doorway That Separates The Conscious From The Unconscious.

They Walked Through The Rainy Dark Like Gaunt Ghosts, And Garraty Didn't Like To Look At Them. They Were The Walking Dead.

No, It's Not A Very Good Story - Its Author Was Too Busy Listening To Other Voices To Listen As Closely As He Should Have To The One Coming From Inside.

Listening To Others

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

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!

The Boat Dipped And Swayed And Sometimes Took On Water, But It Did Not Sink; The Two Brothers Had Waterproofed It Well. I Do Not Know Where It Finally Fetched Up, If It Ever Did; Perhaps It Reached The Sea And Sails There Forever, Like A Magic Boat In A Fairytale. All I Know Is That It Was Still Afloat And Still Running On The Breast Of The Flood When It Passed The Incorporated Town Limits Of Derry, Maine, And There It Passes Out Of This Tale Forever.

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