there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.

I like to always stop with a couple of pages that I haven't - that are just raw copy, where I haven't touched it, I haven't tried to revise it, I haven't tried to polish it. It's like having a little bit of a runway. The next day when you sit down, you have the comfort of saying, well, I have got a little bit here, used to be in the typewriter. Now it's in the magic box, the computer.

Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.

You might question a winkle - a feeling that came to you right out of the blue - but you didn’t question knowing.

Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.