As we get older, our fears, in some way, sharpen and become more personal, because we can no longer - let's say take a book like "It" or maybe "Christine," and say these are make-believe fears.

I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people.

If God rewards us on earth for good deeds—the Old Testament suggests it’s so, and the Puritans certainly believed it—then maybe Satan rewards us for evil ones.

All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I'm blue -- when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day -- I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they are precious.

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

I thought it was great fun to scare people. I also knew it was socially acceptable because there were a lot of horror movies out there.