Background Image

...

When We Blew The First Atomic Bomb At White Sands Near The End Of The War, Nobody Knew What Was Going To Happen. There Was A Theory That The Chain Reaction Would Continue Forever. And We Would Have Created A Little Tiny Sun Out There In The Desert That Would Burn Until The End Of The Universe. It Wasn't A Widely Held Theory But It Was A Theory That Nobody Had A Way Of Disproving. There Were People Who Thought It Wouldn't Go Off At All, That It Would Simply Sit Out There And Melt And Produce A Great Big Dirty Cloud Of Radioactivity. Nobody Knew.

-Stephen King

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When We Blew The

Stephen King

...

When We Blew The First Atomic Bomb At White Sands Near The End Of The War, Nobody Knew What Was Going To Happen. There Was A Theory That The Chain Reaction Would Continue Forever. And We Would Have Created A Little Tiny Sun Out There In The Desert That Would Burn Until The End Of The Universe. It Wasn't A Widely Held Theory But It Was A Theory That Nobody Had A Way Of Disproving. There Were People Who Thought It Wouldn't Go Off At All, That It Would Simply Sit Out There And Melt And Produce A Great Big Dirty Cloud Of Radioactivity. Nobody Knew.

Views: 85313

Topic

More From Stephen King

There Is The Watchmaker Theory That God Wound Up The Universe And Let It Tick. That May Be. Or It May Be That He Takes A Hand In Things From Time To Time. But Whatever It Is, I Am Sure That There Is Something Out There.

Successful Rebellions Always Begin In Secret.

I Believe The First Draft Of A Book — Even A Long One — Should Take No More Than Three Months…any Longer And — For Me, At Least — The Story Begins To Take On An Odd Foreign Feel, Like A Dispatch From The Romanian Department Of Public Affairs, Or Something Broadcast On High-band Shortwave Duiring A Period Of Severe Sunspot Activity.

It's Better To Be Good Than Evil, But One Achieves Goodness At A Terrific Cost.

Parenting Is The Greatest Of Hum-a-few-bars-and-i'll-fake-it Skills.

Write What You Like, Then Imbue It With Life And Make It Unique By Blending In Your Own Personal Knowledge Of Life, Friendship, Relationships, Sex, And Work. Especially Work. People Love To Read About Work. God Knows Why, But They Do.

I Changed It. I Had To. Do You Know Why?" She Studied Him, Her Eyes Grave. "because That Was Then And This Is Now. Because The Past Is Gone, Even Though It Defines The Present.

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

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.

In Bowling And In Life, If A Person Made The Spares, The Strikes Would Take Care Of Themselves.

The Only Mortal Sin Is Giving Up.

He Began To Cry, Not Hysterically Or Screaming As People Cry When Concealed Rage With Tears, But With Continuous Sobs Who Has Just Discovered That He's Alone And Will Be For Long. He Cried Because Safety And Reason Seemed To Have Left The World. Loneliness Was A Reality, But In This Situation Madness Was Also Remotely A Possibility.

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?

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.

Language Does Not Always Have To Wear A Tie And Lace-up Shoes. The Object Of Fiction Isn't Grammatical Correctness But To Make The Reader Welcome And Then Tell A Story... To Make Him/her Forget, Whenever Possible, That He/she Is Reading A Story At All.

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.

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've Killed Enough Of The World's Trees.

Stories Are Like Relics, Part Of An Undiscovered Preexisting World. The Writer's Job Is To Use The Tools In His Or Her Toolbox To Get As Much Of Each One Out Of The Ground Intact As Possible.

Don’t Go Beyond, No Matter How Much You Feel You Need To, Doctor. The Barrier Was Not Made To Be Broken. Remember This: There Is More Power Here Than You Know. It Is Old And Always Restless. Remember.

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.

If It's Ka It'll Come Like A Wind, And Your Plans Will Stand Before It No More Than A Barn Before A Cyclone

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.

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open.

Every Man Or Woman Who Loves Him, They Hate Him Too, Because He's A Hard God, A Jealous God.

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

Sarcastic People Tend To Be Marshmallows Underneath The Armor

We Either Learn To Accept Or We End Up Writing Letters Home With Crayons.

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

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

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

The Mind Can Calculate, But The Spirit Yearns, And The Heart Knows What The Heart Knows

What Jack Didn't Understand Was That No Matter Where He Went, The Same Asshole Got Off The Plane.

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.

The Road And The Tale Have Both Been Long, Would You Not Say So? The Trip Has Been Long And The Cost Has Been High... But No Great Thing Was Ever Attained Easily. A Long Tale, Like A Tall Tower, Must Be Built A Stone At A Time.

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.

Explanations Are Such Cheap Poetry.

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

Human Nature Baby, Grab It And Growl.

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

If I Kept Saying It; If I Kept Reaching Out. My Accident Really Taught Me Just One Thing: The Only Way To Go On Is To Go On. To Say 'i Can Do This' Even When You Know You Can't.

The Thing Under My Bed Waiting To Grab My Ankle Isn't Real. I Know That, And I Also Know That If I'm Careful To Keep My Foot Under The Covers, It Will Never Be Able To Grab My Ankle.

Gordie: Do You Think I'm Weird? Chris: Definitely. Gordie: No Man, Seriously. Am I Weird? Chris: Yeah, But So What? Everybody's Weird

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

Life Isn't A Support System For Art. It's The Other Way Around.

Support Systems

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

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?

A Coward Judges All He Sees By What He Is.

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

...for The First Time In My Life, Writing Was Hard. The Problem Was The Teaching...by Most Friday Afternoons I Felt As If I'd Spent The Week With Jumper Cables Clamped To My Brain.

My Feeling Of The Whole Genre, Of The Terror Tale, Is This: The Best Thing That You Can Do For The Readers In This Field Is To Terrify Them. It Is Something That Is Intellectual, It Happens In Your Mind.

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

The Late Afternoon Sunlight, Warm As Oil, Sweet As Childhood.

I Think It Is Beyond Doubt That H. P. Lovecraft Has Yet To Be Surpassed As The Twentieth Century's Greatest Practitioner Of The Classic Horror Tale.

The Thought Process Can Never Be Complete Without Articulation.

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

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

As It Happened, All Three Of Us Turned Out To Be Real Writers--a Coincidence Almost Too Large To Be Termed Mere Coincidence In A Society Where Literally Tens Of Thousands (maybe Hundreds Of Thousands) Of College Students Aspire To The Writer's Trade And Where Bare Hundreds Actually Break Through.

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.

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

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

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?

We Make Up Horrors To Help Us Cope With The Real Ones.

If You Don't Have The Time To Read, You Don't Have The Time Or The Tools To Write.

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

If Life Teaches Anything At All It Teaches That There Are So Many Happy Endings That The Man Who Believes That There Is No God Needs His Rationality Called Into Serious Question.

No Knowledge Obtained Without Risk

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

The Cumulative Power Of Doing Things The Same Way Every Day Seems To Be A Way Of Saying To The Mind: You're Going To Be Dreaming Soon.

Sometimes There Is Absolutely No Difference At All Between Salvation And Damnation.

Advertising Tends To Be Most Effective In Jogging Finally Into Action Those People Who Are Well-enough Disposed Towards A Product, But Have Not Yet Got Around To Buying It.

As A Species We're Fundamentally Insane.

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

I Love You Too Much To Lie To You, Lisey. I Love You With All That Passes For My Heart. I Suspect That Kind Of All-out Love Becomes A Burden To A Woman In Time, But It's The Only Kind I Have To Give. I Think We're Going To Be Quite A Wealthy Couple In Terms Of Money, But I'll Almost Certainly Be An Emotional Pauper All My Life. I've Got The Money Coming, But As For The Rest I've Got Just Enough For You, And I Won't Ever Dirty Or Dilute It With Lies. Not With The Words I Say, Not With The Ones I Hold Back.

We Sometimes Need To Create Unreal Monsters And Bogies To Stand In For All The Things We Fear In Our Real Lives.

Rationalism Is The Idea That We Can Ever Understand Anything About The State Of Being. It's A Deathtrip. It Always Has Been. . . . And If Rationalism Is A Deathtrip, Then Irrationalism Might Very Well Be A Lifetrip . . . At Least Until It Proves Otherwise.

You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

As Infants, Our First Victory Comes In Grasping Some Bit Of The World, Usually Our Mother's Fingers. Later We Discover That The World, And The Things Of The World, Are Grasping Us, And Have Been All Along.

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.

Anything With The Power To Make You Laugh Over Thirty Years Later Isn’t A Waste Of Time. I Think Something Like That Is Very Close To Immortality.

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.

Time Continued To Pass - The Oldest Trick In The World, And Maybe The Only One That Really Is Magic.

A Good Reputation Is Something That Must Be Earned, Yet Can Never Be Bought.

Good Reputation

I Don't Have Anything Against Either Of The Dead Movies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, None Of Those Movies. If It Scares Somebody, I Think That It Is Serving A Valid Purpose. It Is Doing What The Filmmaker Intended. But, It Is Not Something That You Hand To Kids.

Bad Chances Were Better Than No Chances.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

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

True Love Always Happens In A Flash.

The Definition Of An Asshole Is Someone Who Doesn't Believe What He Is Seeing.

I Am The Literary Equivalent Of A Big Mac And Fries.

Talent Is Never Static. It's Always Growing Or Dying.

Jesus Watches From The Wall, But His Face Is Cold As Stone, And If He Loves Me As She Tells Me Why Do I Feel So All Alone?

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

How Many Have To Die Before We Will Give Up These Dangerous Toys?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

And That Almost Killed You?" "it Wasn't Deep But It Got Infected. Infection Means That The Bad Germs Got Into It. Infection's The Most Dangerous Thing There Is, Tom. Infection Was What Made The Superflu Germ Kill All The People. And Infection Is What Made People Want To Make The Germ In The First Place. An Infection Of The Mind.

You Can't Deny Laughter; When It Comes, It Plops Down In Your Favorite Chair And Stays As Long As It Wants.

The Person Healed Has An Obligation To Then Ask Why— To Meditate On God's Will, And The Extraordinary Lengths To Which God Has Gone To Realize His Will.

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

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.

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

It Was Life, Often Unsatisfying, Frequently Cruel, Usually Boring, Sometimes Beautiful, Once In A While Exhilarating.

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.

A Place Is Yours When You Know Where All The Roads Go.

Nobody Likes A Clown At Midnight

In Polite Society, We Call Our Obsessions Hobbies.

Of Course They Had More Chains On Him Than Scrooge Saw On Marley's Ghost, But He Could Have Kicked Up Dickens If He'd Wanted. That's A Pun, Son.

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

Fantasy Has A Better Chance Of Lasting Than A Lot Of Other Things. The Hobbit And The Narnia Books, They Seem To Get Handed Down Father To Son, Mother To Daughter. Because They're Set In A Fantasy World, They Can Remain Relevant.

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

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.

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.

How Do We Remember To Remember? That's A Question I've Asked Myself Often Since My Time On Duma Key, Often In The Small Hours Of The Morning, Looking Up Into The Absence Of Light, Remembering Absent Friends. Sometimes In Those Little Hours I Think About The Horizon. You Have To Establish The Horizon. You Have To Mark The White. A Simple Enough Act, You Might Say, But Any Act That Re-makes The World Is Heroic. Or So I've Come To Believe.

Lightning Flashed Dully Inside The Clouds On The Horizon Making Them Look As If They Had Fireflies Of Their Own, Monster Fireflies The Size Of Dinosaurs.

Go Now. Our Journey Is Done. And May We Meet Again, In The Clearing, At The End Of The Path.

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.

I Wanted To Say Goodbye To Someone, And Have Someone Say Goodbye To Me. The Goodbyes We Speak And The Goodbyes We Hear Are The Goodbyes That Tell Us We´re Still Alive.

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

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.

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.

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.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter Is Populated With Vivid, Sympathetic Characters, And Driven By Terrors Both Human And Supernatural. It's The Kind Of Book That's Impossible To Put Down Once It Has Been Picked Up. It Kept Me Reading Far Into The Night. Straub Builds Otherworldly Terror Without Ever Losing Touch With His Attractive Cast Of Youngsters, Who Age Beautifully. Put This One High On Your List.

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.

... 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.

The Concept Of Dreaming Is Known To The Waking Mind But To The Dreamer There Is No Waking, No Real World, No Sanity; There Is Only The Screaming Bedlam Of Sleep.

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.

I Think The Best Writers Are Voracious Readers Who Pick Up The Cadences And The Feel Of Narration Through A Number Of Different Books. And You Begin By Maybe Copying The Style Of Writers That Really Knocked You Out.

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.

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.)

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

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

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.

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

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 Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs.

I Never Saw Any Of My Dad's Stories. My Mother Said He Had Piles And Piles Of Manuscripts.

Time Was A Face On The Water, And Like The Great River Before Them, It Did Nothing But Flow.

Poe Was The First Writer To Write About Main Characters Who Were Bad Guys Or Who Were Mad Guys, And Those Are Some Of My Favorite Stories.

I Did A Couple Of Writing Seminars In Canada With High School Kids. These Were The Bright Kids; They All Have Computers, But They Can't Spell. Because Spell-check Won't [help] You If You Don't Know Through From Threw. I Told Them, "if You Can Read In The 21st Century, You Own The World." Because You Learn To Write From Reading.

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

Keeping Secrets

Do Any Men Grow Up Or Do They Only Come Of Age?

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.

Everything's A Lot Tougher When It's For Real. That's When You Choke. When It's For Real.

Later, Going Home, I Realized They Didn't Look Alike At All; What Made Them Seem To Was The Aftermath Of Stress And The Lingering Of Sorrow. It's Strange How Pain Marks Our Faces, And Makes Us Look Like Family.

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

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.

I've Taken Off Two Months, Three Months At A Time, And, By The End, I Get Really Squirrelly. My Night Life, My Dream Life, Gets Extremely Populated And Crazed.

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

In Both Writing And Sleeping, We Learn To Be Physically Still At The Same Time We Are Encouraging Our Minds To Unlock From The Humdrum Rational Thinking Of Our Daytime Lives.

The Simple Truth Of Things Is That Bad Dreams Are Far Better Than Bad Wakings.

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.

Love Is What Moves The World, I've Always Thought...it Is The Only Thing Which Allows Men And Women To Stand In A World Where Gravity Always Seems To Want To Pull Them Down...bring Them Low...and Make Them Crawl.

Fools Are The Only Folk On The Earth Who Can Absolutely Count On Getting What They Deserve.

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.

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.

You Say True, I Say Thankya.

The First Real Terror Struck Him Then, And There Was Nothing Supernatural About It. It Was Only A Realization Of How Easy It Was To Trash Your Life. That Was What Was So Scary. You Just Dragged The Fan Up To Everything You Had Spent The Years Raking Together And Turned The Motherfucker On.

" Science Is Beginning To Encroach On Every Level Of Our Volition". And To Me, That Is A Frightening Social Concept. It Doesn't Have Anything To Do With The Right To Have An Abortion Verses The Right To Life. It Has To Do With The Ability Of Science To Keep Things Alive And The Ability Of Science To Really Control Our Lives.

I Never Have A Thematic Intention At The Outset.

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?

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

You Cannot Friend A Hawk, They Said, Unless You Are A Hawk Yourself, Alone And Only A Sojourner In The Land, Without Friends Or The Need Of Them.

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.

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.

The Trick Is To Teach Yourself To Read In Small Sips As Well As Long Swallows.

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

To The Devil With False Modesty.

A Woman Who Would Steal Your Love When Your Love Was Really All You Had To Give Was Not Much Of A Woman.

Kids, Fiction Is The Truth Inside The Lie, And The Truth Of This Fiction Is Simple Enough: The Magic Exists.

Dead Was The Gift That Kept On Giving. Dead, Like Diamonds, Was Forever.

It's Only A Little Secret, But Having A Secret Makes Me Feel Better. Like A Human Being Again.

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 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.

I Enjoy Going Back And Forth Between Plays And Novels. It`s Like Having A Wife And A Mistress. Books Are The Wife; Plays, The Mistress.

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 ... Or Change. Once Such Incantatory Phrases As "we See Now Through A Glass Darkly" And "mysterious Are The Ways". He Chooses His Wonders To Perform" Are Mastered, Logic Can Be Happily Tossed Out The Window". Religious Mania Is One Of The Few Infallible Ways Of Responding To The World's Vagaries, Because It Totally Eliminates Pure Accident. To The True Religious Maniac, It's All On Purpose.

I've Been Typed As A Horror Writer, And 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."

The Ghost Story Movie That Scared Me The Most Was The Changeling With George C. Scott. I Think That's Sometimes Overlooked, But It's A Wonderful Piece Of Work.

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

Like All Sweet Dreams, It Will Be Brief, But Brevity Makes Sweetness, Doesn't It?

I Don't Want You To Apologize For Being Rich; I Want You To Acknowledge That In America, We All Should Have To Pay Our Fair Share.

Adults Are The Real Monsters.

Give A Man Or Woman Back His Self-respect, And In Most Cases-not All, But Most-you Also Give Back That Person's Ability To Think With At Least Some Clarity.

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

Trending Author

Margaret Sanger

Category