Shake the hand that shook the world.

Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward life with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.

I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous.

Above all else, be consistent.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

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.

What's behind the door or lurking at the top of the stairs is never as frightening as the door or the staircase itself.

It's Merry Christmas at our house. Whatever it is at yours, have a happy one. And be good to somebody.

You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.

The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.

I'm so afraid that all I can reach will lead me to all I dare not see.

I believe in Santa Claus. I believe in the Easter Bunny. I believe in the Tooth Fairy. But I don't believe in you. This is battery acid. Now, you disappear!

They came to see what happened to their town, to see if it was indeed lying burnt and bleeding. Many of them also came to die.

The cumulative power of doing things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind: You're going to be dreaming soon.

I kill with my heart, motherfucker.

I go where the story leads. And, sometimes, it is a little bit outrageous. And I relish that. I sort of want to be as much on the edge as I can.

This is what romance gets you -- a noose around your neck and a crazy woman with two guns somewhere behind you.

Teddy, Vern, Chris: I don't shut up. I grow up. And when I look at you, I throw up. Aghhh! Gordie: And then your mom goes around the corner and she licks it up.

A cloud-congested caul that is alternately red, orange, vermilion, purple. Sometimes the clouds break apart in great, slow rafts, letting through beams of innocent yellow sunlight that are bitterly nostalgic for the summer that has gone by.