To write is human, to edit is divine.

My feeling of the whole genre, of the terror tale, is this: The best thing that you can do for the readers in this field is to terrify them. It is something that is intellectual, it happens in your mind.

What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell.

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.

I think everybody has experiences from time to time they can't explain. They are peculiarities. Usually we just dismiss them because they are uncomfortable to think about.

When you start, it's very cold, an impossible task. But then maybe the characters start to take on a little bit of life, or the story takes a turn that you don't expect ... With me that happens a lot because I don't outline, I just have a vague notion. So it's always felt like less of a made thing and more of a found thing. That's exciting. That's a thrill.

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.