
Books are a uniquely portable magic.

If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.

A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.

Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.

Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.

The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.

Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to.

Go then, there are other worlds than these.

That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.

Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.

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

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Nobody likes a clown at midnight

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

When all else fails, give up and go to the library.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.

FEAR stands for fuck everything and run.

There's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

Your hair is winter fire January embers My heart burns there, too.

And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.

Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

Just remember that Dumbo didn't need the feather; the magic was in him.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.

God grant me to SERENITY to accept what I cannot change the TENACITY to change what I may and the GOOD LUCK not to f*** up too often

The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows

I tend to scare myself.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.

Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.

She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.

It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.

Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.

Time's the thief of memory

Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.

Do you drink?" "Of course,I just said I was a writer.

Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.

The only mortal sin is giving up.

Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing.

We all float down here!

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

Am I weird?" "Yeah. But so what? Everybody's weird.

Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.

If I kept saying it; if I kept reaching out. My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say 'I can do this' even when you know you can't.

I write to find out what I think.

When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.

People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.

We're here to fuck shit up

A person can't change all at once.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

A coward judges all he sees by what he is.

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.

Sometimes dead is better

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. When you find something at which you have talent, you do that thing (what ever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes pop out of your head.

Do it for joy and you can do it forever

If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it's yours.

Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.