It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic.

Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.

And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism.

I have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex - a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses... I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force.

What's been tried once had been tried once before... and before... and before...

On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew.