“If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse shit.”

“I discovered news of old horrors in old books; read intelligence of old atrocities in old periodicals; always in the back of my mind, every day a bit louder, I heard the seashell drone of some growing, coalescing force; I seemed to smell the bitter ozone aroma of lightings-to-come.”

“Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.”

“There'll always be a market for shit, of course. Just look at Jeffrey Archer! He writes like old people fuck doesn't he?”

“The Writer: [voiceover] I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959-a long time ago, but only if you measure in terms of years. I was living in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock. There were only twelve hundred and eighty-one people. But to me, it was the whole world.”

“Life is like Friday on a soap opera. It gives you the illusion that everything is going to wrap up, and then the same old shit starts up on Monday.”

“If stone-sober people can fuck like they're out of their minds -- can actually be out of their minds while caught in that throe -- why shouldn't writers be able to go bonkers and still stay sane?”