When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

I want to write about spiders. To me, this is the one theme that cuts right across and scares just about everybody. Spiders, to me, are just about the most horrible, awful things that I can think about. I think everyone is afraid of spiders.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.

Poe was the first writer to write about main characters who were bad guys or who were mad guys, and those are some of my favorite stories,

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

I think it is harder to write a story that appeals to the intellect. But, when you tie onto one, you can do it quite deeply. It really depends on the type of idea you have to begin with.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.