Novelists From The United States

"Truman repeatedly stressed the unique nature of the American presidency. He called it the greatest office ever created by the mind of man. In the Truman Presidential Library, only a few blocks from his house, he had ordered an inscription to be prominently displayed, listing the six tasks of the president. He was commander-in-chief of the armed forces, leader of his political party, initiator of legislation, maker of foreign policy, the head of state and the chief executive, responsible for seeing that the laws passed by Congress were respected and obeyed."

"I don’t want to know movie directors."

"I don’t think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that’s true. But he’s married in later books. I’m not saying he’s very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife."

"I have no television – I hate it"

"When will the Americans learn, that if they would encourage liberty in other countries, they must practice it at home?"

"Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed."

"Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk."

"That’s the way girls were—they always laughed. Because they were bitches."

"Matheson gets closer to his characters than anyone else in the field of fantasy today. ... You don’t read a Matheson story — you experience it."

"I haven't had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister."

"Horror is the removal of masks."

"Magic—that's just a label, you know. Completely meaningless. It wasn't so very long ago that people were saying that electricity was magic."

"Funny...how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie."

"We're all not quite as sane as we pretend to be."

"I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times."

"At first, when the shower curtains parted, the steam obscured the face. Then she did see it there—just a face, peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask. A head-scarf concealed the hair and the glassy eyes stared inhumanly, but it wasn’t a mask, it couldn’t be. The skin had been powdered dead-white and two hectic spots of rouge centered on the cheekbones. It wasn’t a mask. It was the face of a crazy old woman. Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head."

"The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on."

"The bad man had really committed the murders and then he tried to blame it on her. Mother killed them. That's what he said, but it was a lie. How could she kill them when she was only watching, when she couldn't even move because she had to pretend to be a stuffed figure, a harmless stuffed figure that couldn't hurt or be hurt but merely exists forever? She knew that nobody would believe the bad man, and he was dead now, too. The bad man and the bad boy were both dead, or else they were just part of the dream. And the dream had gone away for good. She was the only one left, and she was real. To be the only one, and to know that you are real—that's sanity, isn't it? But just to be on the safe side, maybe it was best to keep pretending that one was a stuffed figure. Not to move. Never to move. Just to sit here in the tiny room, forever and ever. If she sat there without moving, they wouldn't punish her. If she sat there without moving, they'd know that she was sane, sane, sane. She sat there for quite a long time, and then a fly came buzzing through the bars. It lighted on her hand. If she wanted to, she could reach out and swat the fly. But she didn't swat it. She didn't swat it, and she hoped they were watching, because that proved what sort of a person she really was. Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...."

"a world in which the hospital industrial complex makes “obsolete” different bodies"

"Friends change toward the ill person, some revealed in their strange and beautiful kindness and some exposed in their utter, ugly selfishness."

"I can’t write myself except through reading others’ words."

"Why would anyone write about illness except the ill? And at first, too, the experience is too close for the ill person to be a reliable witness. The mind doesn’t want to write about the body’s condition but to change it, for in dreams the body can still dance!"

"It’s curious that the Latin root of the Middle English word for tradition, tradere, means not only to “impart” and “give over,” but also to “betray."

"New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities — in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East."

"A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material. Resentment sharpens his eye, hostility hones his killer instinct."

"Membership in the closed society of the motion picture industry is almost never revoked for moral failings."

"I had been exposed to the motion picture industry at oblique angles ever since I arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, and some of its working arrangements seemed to me far more magical than that glamour for which the Industry was noted: there was the way in which failure escalated the possibilities of success, the way in which price bore no relation to demand. There was the way in which millions of dollars were gambled on ephemeral, unpredictable and, uncomfortably often, invalid ideas of marketability. There was the way that many, perhaps most, people in the Industry remained unconscious of their own myths and superstitions. There was the Eldorado mood of life in the capital, the way in which social and economic fortunes could shoot up or plummet down, as in a mining boom town, on no more than rumors, the hint of a rich vein, the gossip that the lode was played out."

"The insatiable appetites of instant communication have necessitated a whole new set of media ground rules, pedicated not only on the recording of fact but also on the projection of glamour and image and promise. The result of this cultural nymphomania is that we have become a nation of ten-minute celebrities. People, issues and causes hit the charts like rock groups, and with approximately as much staying power."

"Hollywood is a technological crapshoot."

"Beating up on screenwriters is a Hollywood blood sport; everyone in the business thinks he or she can write, if only time could be found. That writers find the time is evidence of their inferior position on the food chain. In the Industry, they are regarded as chronic malcontents, overpaid and undertalented, the Hollywood version of Hessians, measuring their worth in dollars, since ownership of their words belongs to those who hire and fire them."

"Stanley claims that the world is divided up into two kinds of people – those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don’t."

"There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis. ... Conspiracy is a small but durable seller, retooled every year or so."

"What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam War is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not."

"The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord."

"I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge."

"It deserves to be mentioned here that one purpose of these huge fees is to establish respect; in the constitution of Hollywood, a million-dollar director has half a million dollars more respect than a $500,000 director. This is why the Eleventh Commandment of a motion picture negotiation is Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal. Everyone knows what everyone else makes (this information is passed around like popcorn at a movie), and the person who violates this Eleventh Commandment is seen not as a model of restraint and moderation but as a plain goddamn fool."

"Anecdotes are factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss, often set in gilded venues and populated with familiar names as background atmosphere, purged of ambiguity in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing smoothly."

"Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe."

"The sixteenth hole wouldn’t have gone well even if the herd of wyverns hadn’t showed up."

"Look, we’re not getting anywhere. Why don’t we all return to our respective…whatever you call them. Continua, quantum glitches, Erewhons, reflections of reflections—"

"Nobody ever gained anything by playing chess with himself."

"So far, so good, the man said as he fell thirty-nine of forty stories."

"Fate, eh? Bloody bad luck, I call it."

"Tell my doppelgänger not to do anything I wouldn’t do."

"“It might have something to do with quantum uncertainty. ‘Quantum uncertainty’ is good for explaining just about anything that doesn’t make sense.”"

"Chico’s was busy that night, the dance floor a scrummage of writhing humanity. Snowclaw couldn’t get over the noise in the place. It had taken some getting used to. He didn’t quite understand what all the thumping and screeching was about, though he knew it had something to do with music. And the dancing was completely incomprehensible. Snowy took it to be some complex courting ritual. But what did the flashing lights have to do with anything?"

"Silence hung like a boulder precariously balanced."

"Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future."

"“You’ve been planning moves in advance.” “As necessary in life as in chess.”"

"“Deems, this new pastime of yours may prove your undoing.” “Eh?” “Thinking. You’ve done so little of it in your life. This much exertion all at once…Well, it can’t be healthy.”"