f you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of coarse you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds.

You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.

...so I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside it's like lodestones inside you and sooner or later you come near something that you're supposed to be doing with your life and it's like a magnet. It attracts.

A gunslinger knows pride, that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff.

High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beefed up.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.

By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

The gunslinger had no idea what tooter-fish was, but he knew a popkin when he saw it.