I prefer working, period. I think that I like doing film more just because when you get a script, you have the story from start to finish, so you can really find the character's arc, and when you walk away from it, you know you're sort of powerless t...
I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - th...
Stephen King once wrote, “Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.” In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why - but there can be no explanation, and ...
I am not an actor. Yes, every so often I appear on talk shows to promote something I've written, and I enjoy doing so because I have a lot of stories to tell, and I like making audiences laugh. But that's not acting. That's just me being me.
I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you...
Many theologians believe the Gospel writers include miracle stories in order to prove that Jesus is divine. But miracles are not proof of deity. Many Old Testament prophets heal people and even raise them from the dead, yet they are mere mortals. Jes...
Reading requires actual concentration. If you skipped a paragraph, or even an important sentence, you could lose the entire story. With most TV shows, though, you didn't have to concentrate at all. You could space out for a good ten minutes, then com...
An author is a trigger to our own imaginations. We either go along for the ride, or we flinch and look the other way. Don't look the other way. Embrace the story, embrace the characters, embrace everything the author wants you to explore, because the...
Readers are distrustful and, although they accept the rules of the proposed game upon entry, they remain on the lookout for the slightest contradiction and often allow their own prejudices to lead them astray. When they have an openly autobiographica...
A good part of the physical attraction [between the hero and heroine of a romance novel] comes to life during these exchanges as well, since language creates a meeting of the minds. I have long thought that these lines of dialogue carve out the lines...
In preparing the present volume, it has been the aim of the author to do full justice to the ample material at his command, and, where possible, to make the illustrations tell the main story to anatomists. The text of such a memoir may soon lose its ...
Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into m...
As a child, I amused myself by making up stories. I'd lie in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping and imagine other lands where people were doing fascinating things. By fifth grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it took several more decades t...
It’s not enough to wish, dream, hope. Even children know this. We must set sail into the sea of uncertainty. We must meet fear face-to-face. We must take our dreams as maps for a greater journey. Dreams, to come true, need a good story. So go live ...
But love – don’t we all talk a great deal of nonsense about it? What does one mean? ... It’s only a story one makes up in one’s mind about another person, and one knows all the time it isn’t true. Of course one knows; why, one’s always ta...
I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the...
One of the rules of the road is that if you want to create the sense of silence, it frequently has more pungency if you include the tiniest of sounds. By manipulating what you hear and how you hear it and what other things you don't hear, you can not...
One night I saw Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Elvis for a dollar, if you believe that, in an open-air concert. Presley, I got to meet and go into his house and so forth. My wife says I should quit tellin' that story, 'cause they'll know h...
Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any,...
I'm going to start work on developing a series for HBO, because I'm naturally given to episodic stories of considerable length. And I won't have to listen to complaints about how wordy and long my work is if you can watch it on your telephone on the ...
So deep is the conflict, I believe I cannot breathe for all the doubt, guilt and sorrow my sister is pushing into me as her hand presses harder upon my sore breastplate and her fingers nervously twist the rusted clasp I remember so well. She is liste...
