Stephen King

"A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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 must not come lightly to the blank page."

"I am, he thought dimly, watching a vampire take a piss."

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

"And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that."

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

"I wouldn't have missed a single minute of it, Not for the whole world."

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

"If you don’t have the time to do something right, where are you going to find the time to fix it?"

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."