Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society’. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy.
“
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Stephen King, “On Writing”
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Bartenders are the superheroes of After Midnight,
saving the souls of
these depraved gods weeping into their whiskey.
The air in here is thick with the odor of smoke and hot machine grease.
We’re slaves to our self-indulgent anxiety,
every last one of us,
and crippled by our impotent fury.
90 people get the swine flu and everyone wants to wear a mask. 1 million people have AIDS, and no one wants to wear a condom.
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
