For the first time in years, Darcy Madsen Anderson slipped from her chair onto her knees and began to pray. It did no good. The house was empty except for her.
I’m your number one fan – Annie Wilkes.
The headless chicken strutted off into the Richardsons’ dooryard, blood spouting, wings fluttering. After a bit it found out it was dead and lay down decently.
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. Good writing is also about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with.
Could you actually remember pain? He didn’t think so. You knew there was such a thing, and that you had suffered it, but that wasn’t the same.
Yet the laughter had a tinge of uneasiness about it, because this business about nineteen had gotten a trifle weird.
It will never stop, Danny thought. The Overlook burned and the most terrible of its revenants went into the lockboxes, but I can’t lock away the shining, because it isn’t just inside me, it is me. Without booze to at least stun it, these visions will go on until they drive me insane.
Little changes at first, maybe, but as the Bruce Springsteen song tells us, from small things, baby, big things one day come. They might be good changes, ones.
Once upon a time, I would have said we choose our paths at random: this happened, then that, hence the other. Now I know better. There are forces.
She thought her heart would swell with happiness until it killed her.
A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a ‘what-if’ question...
Dan gripped tighter, increasing the pressure until the lowered eyes came up and met his. “We’re all going to Boston, but John and I have other business to take care of there.
Beyond it was the entrance to Bell’s Amusement Park. That adjunct to the Tulsa State Fair is gone now, but in September of 1992, Bell’s was blasting away full force. Both roller coasters – the wooden Zingo and the more modern Wildcat – were whirling and twirling, trailing happy screams behind each hairpin turn and suicidal plunge.
Could you not have watched with me one hour?” Jesus had asked Peter, and that was a very good question, one you couldn’t answer.
Jack Torrance looked back over his shoulder once into the impenetrable, musty-smelling darkness and thought that if there was ever a place that should have ghosts, this was it.
What happens if there are others like her? What happens to the world?
That one smooth black eye stared, and reflected in it I fancied I could see the cyclopeon city, and the endless column of the marching dead.
He’ll keep changing tacks, Marcia had said. It’s the way he puts people on the defensive. Pretty soon he’ll have you hitting out at where you think he’s going to be, and he’ll get you someplace else.
He could think of the world beyond Akron, which wasn’t such a bad place but was, you know, Akron.
You’ll begin learning it today. As you learn to talk the Talk, you’ll learn to walk the walk. I’m not going to explain that, because it can’t be explained; it can only be learned.