The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.

And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not.

Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear

Sometimes dead is better

Nobody lives forever, but we all shine on.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

I wasn't a social drinker. I used to say that I didn't want to go to bars because they were full of assholes like me.