Stories Quotes - Page 165

My main goal is to tell a story.

I like to end stories where the readers have a little room to run. They can resolve things as they like in their own mind.

I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.

There are a lot of people in the field [ of horror stories] that I do read. There is a lot of stuff that is written in this field, though, that is not very good. You just have to look for the good stuff.

I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens... this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives.

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.

The worst thing you can try to do is to steer the story once it gets going. You just kind of follow along and see where it goes. That's the fun.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.

Without story books is like a person with no soul.

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

Remember that 'plumber in space' is not such a bad setup for a story.

When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.

When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

The ghost story movie that scared me the most was The Changeling with George C. Scott. I think that's sometimes overlooked, but it's a wonderful piece of work.

...my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves.

That's the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the most inopportune moments.

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground.

When I start a story, I don't know where it's going.

Pay and the story rolls. Steal and the story folds. No stealing from the blind newsboy.

...book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel: book-buyers want a good story...something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages.

A short story is like a kiss in the dark.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

Politics always change. Stories never do.

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