Wes > Wes's Quotes

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.”
― Stephen King

“and nothing, and nothing. the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who’d kill you
because they’re crazy and justify it because
it’s the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good”
― Charles Bukowski, The Essential Bukowski: Poetry

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“Sometimes one forgets that not everyone in this world is a bastard.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Prisoner of Heaven

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Never Explain Anything”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I'd netted a bachelor's in English from Boston University, but it had done less for me, in strictly financial terms, than the eight-week course that earned me a commercial driver's license.”
― Joe Hill, Full Throttle

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up”
― Stephen King, It

“In fact, driving through Arizona I’d explained a little Buddhism to them, specifically karma, reincarnation, and they all seemed pleased to hear the news. “You mean other chance to come back and try again?” asked the poor little Mexican, who was all bandaged from a fight in Juárez the night before. “That’s what they say.” “Well goddammit next time I be born I hope I ain’t who I am now.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums: