David Morrell

“You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.”

“The posters and rock-star buttons and banners were valueless without the perspective of the mind that had attached significance to them. Souvenirs have no worth without nostalgia, after all. They're meaningless if a memory isn't linked to them.”

“Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth with an irony that a self-respecting fiction writer would be ashamed to invent.”

“The guitar. Rubbing the gentle polishOn Every smooth contour.On the lap. Knowing every curveAs the light shines from it.On stage a planned metamorphosisTakes places as the hours go by and theSpace is transformed to a concert hall.The energetic nemesis has struck.The risers are transformed into a stageAnd black boxes turned into powerfulPieces of sound equipment.The spring is taut.Backstage while pandemoniumSweeps the hall and peopleCrowd the arena as ants flow to a cake.The stage is set, theInstruments tuned and placed.The musicians work out last minuteKinks as the lights dim.An intense force hits the spectators.Energy is released in every form.A power rage beyond comprehension.”

“there are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitionersof them”

“As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.”

“Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.”

“His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.”