"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones."

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

"I don't mean to put down anybody's taste but they were all lovey-dovey, you know, and he got all sparkly. So that kind of spoiled that."

"I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal. I’m a pragmatic liberal."

"In 11/22/63 when Jake asks something like, 'Well, what happens if I end up killing my grandfather?' And there's a pause and Al replies: 'Well, why the fuck would you do that?'"