Stephen King

"Strong delusions travel like cold germs on a sneeze."

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."

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

"When asked, "How do you write?"I invariably answer, "One word at a time,"and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope."

"If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."

"The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way."

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

"As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?"

"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."

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

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

"love is what moves the world, I've always thought...it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down...bring them low...and make them crawl..."

"You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you."

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

"Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses."

"When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off."

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

"It is the tale, not he who tells it."

"It's how we see the world that keeps the darkness beyond at bay. Keeps it from pouring through and devouring us. I think all of us might know that, way down deep."

"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."