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.
The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.
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.
Writing is seduction.
But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.
Just the act of cooking made her feel better, because cooking was life.
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’ve put men to death-men with supposedly immortal souls-that looked dumber than that mouse.
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.
You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.
There’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.
A great whispering noise began to rise in the woods on either side of the tracks, as if the forest had just noticed we were there and was commenting on it.
By tomorrow at this time, I think you’re going to have a much better idea of what crazy is. – Ev Hillman.
But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.
It’s as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, “Here you are. Try not to lose it.” But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to.
Adults are the real monsters.
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.
When you own a piano, it’s harder to think about moving.
Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped.