Peter Straub Quotes

I have been sometimes way too attracted by my own villains because in a way they seem to hold the secret to the heart of the narrative.

I don’t shy from writing about incredibly unpleasant, distressing things. And I get a kick out of it I confess. I like doing that.

He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue eyed: he was his own baby...He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.

In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")

...nobody can protect anybody else from vileness. Or from pain. All you can do is not let it break you in half and keep on going until you get to the other side.

Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.