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....

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

Membacalah empat jam sehari dan menulislah empat jam sehari. Kalau kau tidak bisa meluangkan waktu untuk itu, jangan harap kau bisa menjadi penulis yang baik.

Forse – considerò – non esistono nemmeno amici buoni o cattivi, forse ci sono solo amici, persone che prendono le tue parti quando stai male e che ti aiutano a non sentirti solo. Forse per...

When you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn’t just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

There was a beautiful feeling of calm in my groin, a sense of peace so remarkable it was almost ecstasy——anyone who’ suffered bad pain and then recovered will know what I’m talking about.

A man who loves money is a bastard, someone to be hated. A man who can’t take care of it is a fool. You don’t hate him, but you got to pity him.

There had never been a shortage of fools in the world

Atonement was powerful; it was the lock on the door you closed against the past.

Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn’t known dogs could scream.

If there’s to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself… and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done,...

Black as night and as beautiful as forever.

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I...

Gritaré para que vuelvas

But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. […] True sorrow is as rare as true love.

I hated high school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something wrong with you.

…I’d been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness…

Hearts are tough, Most times they don’t break. Most times they are only bend

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

To the champ, everything is serious business. I’m hoping that he’ll live long enough to learn that in this world that is a very dangerous attitude.

No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.

But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that...

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.

That’s the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the most inopportune moments.

When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing-

Don’t think I know you,” Harold said, grinning, as they shook. He had a firm grip. Larry’s hand was pumped up and down exactly three times and let go. It reminded Larry of the time...

Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing....

Close your eyes and click your heals three times…because there’s no place like Dome.

We’ll eat your steam and lap up your blood. But first, we’ll drink your screams

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 woman had looked into the abyss and then walked out across it.

E’ una bambina che è stata punita per la sua innocente superbia, una bambina che ha commesso l’errore di pensare di essere grande quando era piccola, di contare quando non valeva niente, di essere circondata...

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),…

A man who lies about beer makes enemies

What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.

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...

Listen, I’ve always been a situational writer. My idea of what to do with a plot is to shoot it before it can breed. It’s true that when I start a story, I usually have...

There came a time when you realised that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.

And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.

Last reason for reading horror: it’s a rehearsal for death. It’s a way to get ready. People say there’s nothing sure but death and taxes. But that’s not really true. There’s really only death, you...

There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But… this is what God wants of you.

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.

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...

Strong delusions travel like cold germs on a sneeze.

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.

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the...