When you make his sandwiches, put a sexy or loving note in his lunch box.Collection: Relationship
I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces.Collection: Teacher
Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.Collection: Knowledge
People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.
Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.
Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.
I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.
The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?
I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.
You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.
You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well.
Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.
What I did was take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and sought to make Him utterly believable, a vital breathing character.
We need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job.
There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.
The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.
That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.
Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.
I'm usually working on my own mythology, my own realm of created characters. Stories in mythology inspire me, though I may not be conscious of it.
I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.
I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?
I want to love all the children of God - Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist - everyone. I want to love gay Christians and straight Christians.
I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.
I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out.
I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I've always felt that I wasn't a member of any particular group.
I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I've always had a very close relationship with them.