Waiting rooms were made for books-of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

The color white is the absence of memory.

The shining. It was a good name, a comforting name, because she had always thought of it as a dark thing.

Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word WRITER on it before you can believe you are one? God I hope not.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.