"Were not even in the same year together, let alone the same room....except we are together. Were close."
"One rule of the road not directly stated elsewhere in this book: "The editor is always right." The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editors advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection. Put another way, to write is human, to edit is divine."
"I was born in 1947 and we didnt get our first television until 1958."
"When you write a story, youre telling yourself the story...When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."
"Horror movies, science fiction movies, movies about teenage gangs on the prowl, movies about losers on motorcycles--this was the stuff that turned my dials up to ten."
"I think we had a lot of happiness in those days, but we were scared a lot, too."
"I remember the dark, the sense that I was suffocating, and I remember laughing. Because, while what was happening was sort of horrible, it was also funny. In many ways, Eula-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism."