I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.

You could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go… well, anywhere at all.

The simple truth of things is that bad dreams are far better than bad wakings.

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light. As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.

The mystery of the universe is not time but size.

First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.