Straub Quotes

Why couldn't everyone stay young forever? If not on the outside, then just on the inside, where no one ever got too old to be optimistic. ~ Emma Straub

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

Nothing is whole, not for too damned long. The world is half night. ~ Peter Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

I've been reading Peter Straub since I was a teenager, and his work is hardwired into my brain. A Dark Matter contains echoes of all that has been great about Straub's previous work and builds upon it. This Rashomon-like tale is as spooky and frightening as anything he has written, but it's also an intense and moving celebration of love. Out of the darkness comes, ultimately, a surprising and haunting sense of joy. ~ Dan Chaon

Whatever his circumstances and surroundings, it was only a dead imagination that could call him a failure. ~ Peter Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

Leaving. That was the word she liked to use. Not going away, which implied a return, but leaving, which implied a jet plane. ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

So much of being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut. ~ Emma Straub

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") ~ Peter Straub

I grew up reading Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Isaac Asimov's nonfiction books, and Roald Dahl. ~ Nnedi Okorafor

Parenthood is the only job that gets progressively harder every single year, and you never, ever, ever get a raise. ~ Emma Straub

It's a good thing you write fiction. If you had to describe the real world, nobody would recognize it. ~ Peter Straub

No on thought that they would be anything more or less than perfectly fine. ~ Emma Straub

But there was no way that any man would ever have typed up a list of instructions and usual information for his home, unless of course he were being paid to do so. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that only women were intrinsically capable of, no matter what any quack therapist on television said. ~ Emma Straub

It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives. ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

Facing a wall when you write really aids your concentration. ~ Peter Straub

Kids are forever, even if love isn't, right? ~ Emma Straub

I had this dream in which I was having a cocktail party, and it was in a big room. I was standing at the door saying hello to people, and Jeffrey Dahmer walks up and I say, 'Oh Jeffrey, please go on in, it's right in there.' And then I say to myself, I just put Jeffrey Dahmer in a room with all my friends. ~ Peter Straub

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps. ~ Peter Straub

the major accomplishment of her life was producing two children who seemed to like each other even when no one else was looking, ~ Emma Straub

It struck me that his innate elegance, the product of his character & bearing much more than of the handsome suit and the suede shoes, had been paid for by the surviving of a thousand unimaginable difficulties, each painful to a varying degree. Then I realized that what I meant by elegance was really dignity, that for the first time I had recognized actual dignity in another human being, and that dignity was nothing like the self-congratulatory superiority people usually mistook for it. ~ Peter Straub

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm. ~ Peter Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

There was no excuse, except for the excuse that perfection was impossible, and failure inevitable. ~ Emma Straub

Students set up desks where you could sign petitions for legalizing marijuana or declare yourself in favor of homosexuality and the protection of whales; students thronged by. ~ Peter Straub

Laura was going to sew herself into the shape of happiness all on her own. ~ Emma Straub

I'm being haunted," she blurted out.
"My dear," he cooed. "Turn yourself into a tourist attraction and charge admission. ~ Peter Straub

They were with their mother, and so they were acting like children. ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That's what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else. ~ Emma Straub

It seemed like folly to imagine that one could fill a house (or a tent) with relatives and still expect to have a pleasant vacation. ~ Emma Straub

Elizabeth ran her finger along the windowsill, gathering dust. The view was almost exactly the same as from her own bedroom, only a few degrees shifted. She could still see the Rosens' place, with its red door and folding shutters, and the Martinez house, with its porch swing and the dog bowl. She'd heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three laters -- the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban. The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup or old signage and other people's failures. Newcomers saw only what was in front of them, but people who had been there long enough were always looking at two or three other places simultaneously. The IRT, Canal Jeans, the Limelight. So much of the city she'd fallen in love with was gone, but then again, that's how it worked. It was your job to remember. At least the bridges were still there. Some things were too heavy to take down. ~ Emma Straub

Taylor Swift had probably slept with more people than she had, and good for her. ~ Emma Straub

It's about you. I always thought that you would need some time, you know, to grow up, but I think I just realized that it's never going to happen, not while I'm sitting around waiting for it. ~ Emma Straub

The path to wisdom leads downward, and anyone who decides to take it had better buckle on armor, remember to bring a sword, and get used to the idea that when and if he gets back everyone he talks to is going to think he's a phony. ~ Peter Straub

I can bear to tell you no more - only that they comforted each other as
well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter
experience, that is never quite good enough. ~ Stephen King

Each new book is a tremendous challenge. ~ Peter Straub

Having a daughter whose company he actually enjoyed was one of Jim's favorite accomplishments. The odds were against you, in all matters of family planning. You couldn't choose to have a boy or a girl; you couldn't choose to have a child who favored you over the other parent. You could only accept what came along naturally... ~ Emma Straub

The day was a long bolt of gray cloth; endless. ~ Peter Straub

Sometimes, it seems like sighted people can hardly see anything. ~ Peter Straub

Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity. ~ Peter Straub

She had been like a roller coaster aficionado for whom tame county fair roller coasters were as good as the ones that spun you upside down and dropped you so fast your eyes turned red. It was all just a ride. ~ Peter Straub

Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary. ~ Peter Straub

What we do here is physiologically impossible. So we must train the body to accept the impossible, and then it will become possible. ~ Peter Straub

I've been a fan of vampire fiction since way, way back - I loved Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, Shirley Jackson, lots of great horror and paranormal fiction. ~ Rachel Caine

The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people. ~ Peter Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

They had chosen to make the leap and, having leapt, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful than they'd hoped. ~ Emma Straub

Islands, being harder to get to, naturally separated some of the wheat from the chaff, which was the entire philosophy behind places like Nantucket, where children grew up feeling entitled to private beaches and loud pants. ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

... She might have thought that it was the case, that all things worked out in the end, and that the world was a benevolent place, but she knew better now, and had to fake it. ~ Emma Straub

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do. ~ Peter Straub

The face was no longer bone, but animal - the face of a white wolf. "I forbid you nothing. Nothing," uttered the awful face. "You may go anywhere - you may open any door. But, little bird, remember that you must be prepared to accept whatever you find." The long jaws spread in a smile filled with teeth. ~ Peter Straub

Andi Teran's first novel is vivid and fully realized, an entire universe expertly condensed into the pages you hold in your hands. Ana herself is a complicated delight, and by the end of the book I wanted to scoop her up into my arms. ~ Emma Straub

Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be. ~ Emma Straub

But this story ends when you open the door. It doesn't matter if you managed to guess which room is mine, which door I closed behind me. You put your hand on the door handle, you knock, it's all over. End of story. By choosing one, you chose the other, too. Do you understand why? Those two consequences are joined at the hip, they're Siamese twins. Even if you picked the door with the lady behind it - all questions answered, all explanations given, your life solved for you - it's still true that you gave the tiger permission to jump. You gave your assent to catastrophe, you invited tragedy and horror to walk right in. You got lucky, that's all. Mallon ~ Peter Straub

Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question. ~ Peter Straub

It is not believed that a people capable of inventing the genre of "oral painting" could have spawned the viaduct killer, and in any case no ghetto resident is permitted access to any other area of the city. ("A Short Guide To The City") ~ Peter Straub

(Another writer once asked me why I wrote about "nebbishes." I told him I wanted to write about "the common man.") Sometimes I even ~ Peter Straub

I know this doesn't make sense, but if we ever did this before, exactly this, with you sitting over there and me here, in this same room, well, wasn't the food even better? I mean, a lot better? ~ Peter Straub

Wolves and those who see them are shot on sight. ~ Peter Straub

Dogs were gloriously uncomplicated creatures - food and play and sleep and love, that was all they needed. ~ Emma Straub

She wanted the world to stop and take notice before hobbling forward, forever changed. The problem was that no one seemed to be changed but her. ~ Emma Straub

Holy shit! That's a vampire. He's writing a vampire novel. And I thought, this is the most tired cliche that anybody could dredge up out of the genre, and he just made it jump. ~ Peter Straub

Close your mouth and get out of the way, because here comes Kelly Link, than whom no one is better. ~ Peter Straub

I believe I encountered death, which was a bit too much for a seven-year-old. ~ Peter Straub

The mind was a trap
it was a cage that slammed down over you. ~ Peter Straub

Terrifying ... A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list. ~ Stephen King

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf. ~ Michael Easton

As soon as I started writing Julia, by which I mean while writing its first sentence, I felt a sudden, reassuring charge of excitement. I knew it was going to work. ~ Peter Straub

Adventure is a nameless joy ~ Peter Straub

and rising extremely unlike Phoebus with the dawn to prepare the schoolhouse. ~ Peter Straub

Kindness refreshes and restores the tired and broken. ~ Gerard Straub

A long time ago, when we all lived in the forest and none of us lived anywhere else, ~ Peter Straub

Most people will tell you growing up means you stop believing in Halloween things - I'm telling you the reverse. You start to grow up when you understand that the stuff that scares you is part of the air you breathe. ~ Peter Straub

It was the most beautiful dress Harry had ever seen. It wasn't just a dress; it was a religion. ~ Emma Straub

When the kids were little, she and Zoe had been friends with another mom in the neighborhood, and this lady's kid was so horrible that they both mentioned it to her, that he seemed like a miniature serial killer in training, and she stopped speaking to them. Pretty soon she moved out of the neighborhood, and Elizabeth guessed it was to move closer to whatever prison facility her son was bound to wind up in. People just didn't want to hear it. ~ Emma Straub

I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through. ~ Peter Straub

If the Enchanted Forest were in a movie, they'd always be playing Bob Dylan or Van Morrison or maybe even Leonard Cohen in the background. Greta thought about that a lot. Sometimes when she was taking a shower or helping her mom in the restaurant, she'd imagine what kind of scene it would be and what would be playing to set the mood. ~ Emma Straub

Me tienen hasta los huevos. It means I've had it up to my balls. ~ Emma Straub

Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart. ~ Emma Straub

But you do not reject the supernatural out of hand,' Sears said. 'I don't know if I do or do not,' I said. 'Like most people. ~ Peter Straub

People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside down, the day is night twilight zone feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing in 24 hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed. ~ Emma Straub

The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result. ~ Donald Harington

It glowed in the mid-morning sunlight, the black shutters on the open windows eyelashes on a beautiful face. ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

A good boy almost all of the time, as well behaved as a loyal hound ~ Emma Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

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. ~ Peter Straub

She thought it was too bad it didn't work the other way around, so you could get braver and smarter as you move up in years. But ~ Peter Straub

She tasted what she had said and found it sour enough to be accurate. ~ Peter Straub

Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. ~ Emma Straub

Ideally, I would create a book so interdependent and self-sustaining in its parts, so wondrously connected word by word and paragraph by paragraph, so charged with the joy of language, that it would actually float three or four inches above any table where you try to set it down. ~ Peter Straub

It didn't have a real ending. It just slipped backward when other things happened. ~ Peter Straub

A lyrical, brave and complex novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off. ~ Peter Straub

She thought, instead, with longing of more books - of buying books - of slipping into a narrative of other people's lives. That was release. ~ Peter Straub

If I'd had a friend next to me, I would have squeezed her arm and said, Can you believe this? - but kitsch wasn't kitsch if you were alone. ~ Emma Straub