Quote collection
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"He needs to be corrected, if you don't mind me saying so. He needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more. My own girls, sir, didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of my matches and tried to burn it down. I corrected them. I corrected them most harshly. And when my wife tried to stop me from doing my duty, I corrected her."
"Remember that the truth is in the details. No matter how you see the world or what style it imposes on your work as an artist, the truth is in the details. Of course the devil's there, too-everyone says so-but maybe truth and the devil are words for the same thing. It could be you know."
"Waiting rooms were made for books-of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john."
"A writer's notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around."
"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 - hell, I know that."
"Writers write. That's all it is. It is as simple, and as complex, as that."
"This is probably the single great subject of horror fiction: our need to cope with a mystery that can be understood only with the aid of a helpful imagination."
"Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you."
"I think a lot of times dreams are nothing more than a kind of mental or spiritual flatulence. They're a way of relieving pressure."
"I have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex - a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses... I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force."
"Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you."
"When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story."
"When the time is gone, you can never get it back."
"The past is obdurate. It doesn't want to change."
"Such an ego simply forbade certain lines of thought."
"Pain is the biggest power of love."
"Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list."
"I started to submit when I was twelve, and obviously at that time they weren't good enough, and I suppose in my heart of hearts I knew it. But you have to start sooner or later, you have to dig in."
"Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read."
"It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone."