Peter Straub

“There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.”

“Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.”

“My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.”

“I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.”

“Everyone wants to get better as they go along, but sometimes it's all you can do to stay consistent.”

“When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.”

“I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through.”

“If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.”

“On gym days, I don't get to my desk until 4 in the afternoon, and everything except bedtime and the appointment with the liquid narcotic is pushed back a bit.”

“These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.”

“I had a connoisseur's... appreciation of fear.”

“I believe I encountered death, which was a bit too much for a seven-year-old.”

“Nothing is whole, not for too damned long. The world is half night.”

“What would be frightening about me jumping out of the bush wearing a pig mask is not the sudden surprise, not me, and not the pig mask, but that the ordinary world had split open for a moment to reveal some possibility never previously considered.”

“Of course, the truth is that no one likes change. People in hell not only refuse to leave it, they invite you in, too. Even people who have blasted the other lives that touched their own blasted lives proudly declare in old age that they would not change a thing -- all that cursing and screaming was their life, by God, and it is not possible to imagine any other. Change introduces unpredictability, uncertainty, a universe of disorder. Right before an amoeba splits in two, it says to itself, uh uh, no way, I ain't gonna do that, nope.”

“The actual Blue Rose murders, which lie at the core of the three novels, yield various incorrect solutions which assume the status of truth.”

“From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.”

“However, I think I managed to reach a new level with Koko, and I will always be grateful for the experience.”

“Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.”

“There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite.”