All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.

and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.

May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!

There was a beautiful feeling of calm in my groin, a sense of peace so remarkable it was almost ecstasy——anyone who' suffered bad pain and then recovered will know what I'm talking about.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.

The kids accepted my drinking as a part of life. Not a particularly pernicious part. I didn't beat up on them. Basically I don't think I was so different from a lot of dads who have three or four martinis when they get in from work, wine with dinner and so on.

There are, occasionally, writers who are able to combine both story and style. They are, of course, the best. You get a spectacular view and you also get to look at it from the backseat of a chauffeur-driven Cadillac. In the field of fantasy, those writers able to combine story-as-narration with story-as-style are even rarer. But there are a few...the late Theodore Sturgeon, the early Ray Bradbury...and Richard Christian Matheson. A brilliant chip off the old block.