He needs to be corrected, if you don't mind me saying so. He needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more. My own girls, sir, didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of my matches and tried to burn it down. I corrected them. I corrected them most harshly. And when my wife tried to stop me from doing my duty, I corrected her.

But writers INVITE ghosts, maybe; along with actors and artists, they are the only totally accepted mediums of our society. They make worlds that never were, populate them with people who never existed, and then invite us to join them in their fantasies. And we do it, don't we? Yes. We PAY to do it.

It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

I like to hang out clothes on windy days. Sometimes that's all I feel like. A sheet on a line.

The books are always there, just the way you wrote them. The plays often don`t turn out the way you wanted them to because in the theater, you`re always involved with collaborators and they don`t always see the work the way you do.