Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting.

Stories are like relics, part of an undiscovered preexisting world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.

He remembered waking up once, listening to the wind, thinking of all the dark and rushing cold outside and all the warmth of this bed, filled with their peaceful heat under two quilts, and wishing it could be like this forever.

The writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's.

This is probably the single great subject of horror fiction: our need to cope with a mystery that can be understood only with the aid of a helpful imagination.

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred pound Coke machine, one need worry about little else.

The act of writing itself is done in secret, like masturbation.