"Then, for no reason I could tell you, I tossed the spool again, even though Elaine had asked me not to. Maybe only because, in a way, him chasing a spool was like old people having their slow and careful version of sex - you might not want to watch it , you who are young and convinced that, when it comes to old age, an exception will be made in your case, but they still want to do it."

"Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words - the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both good story and good words, treasure that book."

"Some werewolves are hairy on the inside."

"There was a muffled pop, the sound of a small pumpkin exploding in a microwave oven.Morris cut the wheel to the left and there was another bump as the Biscayne went back into the parking area. He looked in the mirror and saw that Curtis's head was gone.Well, no. Not exactly. It was there, but all spread out. Mooshed. No loss of talent in that mess. Morrie thought."

"Of course it's heavier, he thought. It's got my grief in it. I pull it along with me everywhere I go, so I do."

"The word is only a representation of the meaning, even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning."

"Good! he wanted to cry out to her. Good! Because you only had to see it! I had to wear it!"

"Pardon my French if you're a religious man.''I am,' Bill said, grinning.'Then get outta my cab and go to fucking church,' the cabbie said, and they both burst out laughing."

"Sometimes dead is better."

"Here's what vampires shouldn't be: pallid detectives that drink Bloody Marys and work only at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes. What should they be? Killers, honey. Stone killers that can't get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red, white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus ro."

"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..."

"I can see your dirtypillows."

"The thought process can never be complete without articulation."

"Now that he wanted to feel like he was having a bad dream, he wasn't. He was having a bad reality, and that was something from which you could not wake."

"Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."

"They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil."

"It had been in their hands then; he was quite sure of it. But kids lose everything, kids have slippery fingers and holes in their pockets and they lose everything."

"If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I'll chase you down to the end of your driveway and back, screaming 'Where are your books? You graduated college ten years ago, so how come there are no damn books in your house? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?"

"Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it."

"Some things were better lost than found."

"They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?"

"Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up."

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

"To the champ, everything is serious business. I'm hoping that he'll live long enough to learn that in this world that is a very dangerous attitude."

"To his way of thinking, the only thing more natural than death was sex."

"Zitner said hell would freeze over before something like that happened. Harold had a brief image of Adolf Hitler and Judas Iscariot handing out ice-skates and went on heaving sandbags."

"There was a lot they didn't tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart."

"Resolution demands a sacrifice."

"The wide corridor up the centre of E Block was floored with linoleum the colour of tired old limes, and so what was the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain."

"Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it."

"College was for people who didn't know they were smart."

"A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures."

"Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug."

"Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt."

"Tyler rolls out of bed, sniffs the armpits of yesterday's T-shirt, tosses it aside, gets another out of the drawer. His dad sometimes asks him why he sets his alarm so early -- it's summer vacation, after all -- and Tyler can't seem to make him understand that every day is important, especially those filled with warmth and sunlight and no particular responsibilities. It's as if there's some little voice deep inside him, warning him not to waste a minute, not a single one, because time is short."

"You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down."

"The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but Size."

"The world's a hard place, Danny. It don't care. It don't hate you and me, but it don't love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they're things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it's only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don't love you, but your momma does and so do I."

"God and heaven lasted about four years longer than the Tooth Fairy."

"Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature."

"Do you believe in an afterlife?" the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.Brown nodded. "I think this is it."

"At three in the morning the gaudy paint is off that old whore, the world, and she has no nose and a glass eye. Gaiety becomes hollow and brittle, as in Poe's castle surrounded by the Red Death. Horror is destroyed by boredom. Love is a dream."

"It ain't the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive."

"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do- to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street."

"A gunslinger knows pride, that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff."

"So in that sense, I and my fellow horror writers are absorbing and defusing all your fears and anxieties and insecurities and taking them upon ourselves. We're sitting in the darkness beyond the flickering warmth of your fire, cackling into our caldrons and spitting out spider webs of words, all the time sucking the sickness from your minds and spewing it out into the night."

"Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?She had shaken her head slowly.Men and women who can't get over their past . . . That's what ghosts are."

"Of all the things which make up our Short-Time lives, sleep is surely the best."

"You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It's only kids in high school who are convinced they're never going to change. There's always going to be a pep rally and there's always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future."

"It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to."