Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.

She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

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

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway... You must be prepared to do some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagination, and that means, I'm afraid, that Geraldo, Keith Obermann, and Jay Leno must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.