I tend to scare myself.

Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.

The work, the pride in your work, the worth of the work itself…all those things faded away to the magic-lantern shades they really were when the pain got bad enough.

Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.

He had been (Thinking? Praying?) It was all the same thing.

…it was another year or two before I discovered that drat and draft were different words. During that same period I remember believing that details were dentals and that a bitch was an extremely tall...

It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.

I don’t want Church to be like all those dead pets! she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. I don’t want Church to ever be dead! He’s my cat! He’s not God’s cat! Let God...

Once again there was the desert, and that only.

Oscuridad, no me alcances aquí.

Each year the world Rich lived in felt more and more like a huge electronic haunted house in which digital ghosts and frightened human beings lived in uneasy coexistence.

Mrs. Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.

Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it’s like a law of nature.

Never give a good politician time to pray.

Reconozco el terror como la principal emoción, así que trato de aterrorizar al lector. Pero si me parece que no puedo aterrorizarle, voy a intentar horrorizarle, y si veo que no puedo horrorizarle, intentaré asquearle....

The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound;these are the sounds of dead voices on dead recordsfloating down the broken shaft of memory.When I turn to you to ask if you remember,When...

She was smart and terribly determined, this girl-her will was pure steel, through and through-but she was as human as anyone else. She was lonely, too. Lonely in a way that perhaps only single girls...

I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.

To his way of thinking, the only thing more natural than death was sex.

When asked, “How do you write?” I invariably answer, “One word at a time,” and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider...

There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean...

A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is…like a life without pictures.

The fears of children were simpler and usually more powerful. The fears of children could often be summoned up in a single face… and if bait were needed, why, what child did not love a...

Your hair is winter fire,January embers.My heart burns there, too.-Stephen King, IT

No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want,need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart .

Do grown men always have to play games? Does everything have to be an excuse for another kind of game? Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?

Seven, Richie thought. That’s the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.

I think a great many people would enjoy doing what I did, and that is why they enjoy books and movies (and even TV shows these days) that feature Torture and Dismemberment, etc., etc., etc.

When you’re still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Here’s what vampires shouldn’t be: pallid detectives that drink Bloody Marys and work only at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes. What should they be? Killers, honey. Stone killers...

And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.

One man may shoot himself in the forehead with a .38 and wake up in the hospital. Another may shoot himself in the forehead with a .22 and wake up in hell…if there is such...

There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.

The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.

In his memory there was a great tendency to downplay or completely forget their unlovable characteristics. […] The thoughts that came wanted to be wholly good.

It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.

Everyone— black as well as white— thinks it’s going to be better over the next jump of land.

You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of...

Remember that “seeing is believing” puts the cart before the horse. Art is the concrete artifact of faith and expectation, the realization of a world that would otherwise be little more than a veil of...

She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as...

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...

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s...

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I’ve been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible...

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?

It’s a wholly illogical but nonetheless powerful belief that things will change for the better in a new place; that the urge to self-destruct will magically disappear.

The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

He’s dead?’ Vera asked. ‘He’s dead? Johnny’s dead?’He covered the mouthpiece. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not dead.”Not dead! Not dead!’ she cried, and fell on her knees in the phone nook with an audible thud. ‘O...