"Dreams, after all, are insubstantial things, like mist itself."

"Energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again."

"Tim Stoutheart was afraid, too, I said. "But he went on. I expect you to do the same."

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

"The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatist and the romantic."

"What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

"That this is Russian-A flu, not the more dangerous Swine flu."

"Such grave matters as sin and forgiveness should remain between man and God."

"The narrator, a time traveler from 2011, scoffs at the despondency caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis -- especially the drug and alcohol use of a resident of 1962 he supposedly cares about. Then he finds his compassion because he remembers he is the exception in being able to see beyond the immediate -- and foreboding -- horizon."

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

"Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence."

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

"As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through."

"There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean " hell, I know that."

"Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment."

"My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams."

"He was nothing but a conduit, after all, and there isn't a culvert in the world that remembers the water flowed through it once the rain has stopped."

"His so-fucking-vivid imagination rarely gave him the horrors, but when it did, God help him. God help him once it was warmed up. It was not only warmed up now, it was hot and running on full choke. That there was no sense at all in what he was thinking made not a whit of difference in the dark. In the dark, rationality seemed stupid and logic a dream. In the dark he thought with his skin."

"Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants."

"She knew with suddeness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory.She doubted if they all sensed it - they had seen the world - but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scene, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognisable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace."

"I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't."

"He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially--not in a sugary way but in a businesslike fashion that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake."

"I stood for almost an hour in a line of shuffling, bitter - eyed late mailers (Christmas is such a carefree, low - pressure time - that's one of the things I love about it),..."

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

"Swear to me swear to me that if it isn't dead you'll all come back."

"Invitation to Dance-It's a Dance. And sometimes they turn the lights off in this ballroom.But we'll dance anyway, you and I. Even in the Dark. Especially in the Dark.May I have the pleasure?"

"The heart also knows things, and so does the imagination. Thank God. If not for heart and imagination, the world of fiction would be a pretty seedy place. It might not even exist at all."

"At such times one sees everything and remembers it all. I know from personal experience. I wish I did not."

"Shadows were too black, and when a breeze stirred the trees, the shadows changed in a disquieting way."

"A man who doubts himself shouldn't have to try too hard for too long, not until he's seasoned."

"Thinking, Garraty thought. That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone."

"I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one's own pleasure, that fear may be mild - timidity is the word I've used here. If, however, one is working under deadline - a school paper, a newspaper article, the SAT writing sample - that fear may be intense."

"I looked at what he built, and to me it explained the stars."

"He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet."

"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."

"Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing."

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure."

"His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere."

"Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call "society. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home."

"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."

"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling."

"For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal."

"I don't want Church to be like all those dead pets! she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. I don't want Church to ever be dead! He's my cat! He's not God's cat! Let God have all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!"

"Not today. Instead of Wendy, I found myself thinking of Annie Ross and realizing I'd developed a small but powerful crush on her. The fact that nothing could come of it-she had to be ten years older than me, maybe twelve-only seemed to make things worse. Or maybe I mean better, because unrequited love does have its attractions for young men."

"Good luck is just bad luck with its hair combed."

"At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens as all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago."

"Not everyone believes in ghost's, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?" She had shaken her head slowly. "Men and women who can't get over the past, Aunt Evie said. "That's what ghost's are. Not them. She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. "The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay."

"But it is. It's something you need, and that's a long way from nothing. If you need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don't need is a man who can't let go of the useless baggage of his memories."

"I'm going out for a bottle of champagne. We're going to get bombed."

"Frightened people live in their own special hell."