When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

I do believe that when we're in the process of dying, that all these emergency circuits in the brain take over. I base what I'm saying not on any empirical evidence. I think it's very possible that when you're dying, these circuits open up, which would explain this whole white-light phenomena - when people clinically die and they see their relatives and stuff and say, "Hello, it's great to see you."

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

At the time we’re stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It’s not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.

There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.