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 know there’s a house under there, and I’m pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That’s how I feel. It’s like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: “If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.
They reminded Luke of twins in some old horror movie.
The town cares for devil’s work no more than it cares for God’s or man’s. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough.
Hello, Not-There,” Piper said. Not-There was her private name for God just lately. Earlier in the fall it had been The Great Maybe. During the summer, it had been The Omnipotent Could-Be.
The true world was behind it.
Too much knowledge isn’t good for a person. I know that now.
Liars see their own kind everywhere.
Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.
For a moment the dark and fearsomely sad thoughts which inhabit her mind grow even sadder and darker; Lisey thinks they will either kill her or drive her insane.
It’s gonna be all right,” he told her, not really believing it, knowing as every adult knows in his secret heart that nothing is really all right, ever. “It’s gonna be all right.
I see holes like eyes.
There’s a door in the wall. The door is covered with ivy. The ivy is dead. She waits.
A successful marriage was a balancing act-that was a thing everyone knew. A successful marriage was also dependent on a high tolerance for irritation.
Although love is a dangerous word when it comes from men.
I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let’s talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won’t take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don’t bite. Except... we’ve known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that’s not entirely true. Is it?
But it is perhaps not such a good idea to look back – all the stories say so. Look what happened to Lot’s wife. Best not to look back. Best to believe there will be happily ever afters all the way around – and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings?
In that instant she knew what it must feel like to cross a river into a foreign country, and then set fire to the bridge behind you, and stand on the riverbank, watching and breathing deeply as your only chance of retreat went up in smoke.
I told myself there was time. Of course, that’s what we always tell ourselves, isn’t it? We can’t imagine time running out, and God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.
Beg your pardon,” the gunslinger said. “I was wool-gathering.
Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn’t pay, or refused to pay, you would remain needful for ever.