"Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine if you like, Frankensteins monster on its slab. Here comes lightning, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe its the first really good paragraph you wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, its breathing, you realize. Maybe its even thinking. What in hells name do I do next?"
"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."
"In the life of the mass-order, the culture of the generality tends to conform to the demands of the average human being. Spirituality decays through being diffused among the masses when knowledge is impoverished in every possible way by rationalisation until it becomes accessible to the crude understanding of all."
"I say this to you because we Spaniards are a forgetful people, because we are used to living for the moment, because we do not look back, because we do not know how to see the chain of heroes, because we do not contemplate the sum of sacrifices."
Francisco Franco"Sharon Tate was my best friend. Once, we were roommates. She introduced me to my husband. She was the godmother to my baby daughter who is named for her. In the six years time that I knew her, she never said an unkind word about anyone."
"Long time to see. (VS: Tapion)"
"Most mathematicians prove what they can, von Neumann proves what he wants." Once in a discussion about the rapid growth of mathematics in modern times, von Neumann was heard to remark that whereas thirty years ago a mathematician could grasp all of mathematics, that is impossible today. Someone asked him: "What percentage of all mathematics might a person aspire to understand today?" Von Neumann went into one of his five-second thinking trances, and said: "About 28 percent."
John von Neumann"Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their childrens minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are."