Quotes from Justin Cronin

One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.

I've never written a movie, I'm not in the movie business. I go out to L.A. and I'm like everyone else wandering around in a daze hoping I see movie stars. I write the novels that the movies are based on, and that feels like enough of a job for me.

One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.

The future that I will not live to see is the one my children will live in. That's my immortality. And I shouldn't try to mortgage theirs for my benefit.

I tend to start at 9 o'clock in the morning and write until 3. Those are my best hours. They fit the other rhythms of the world. So I write for six hours, pretty much without any breaks.

How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words.

Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.

What is home but a place where you are truly known?

Don't we all deserve forgiveness? I hope we do; I believe we do. Forgiveness says as much about the character of the person bestowing it as the person receiving it. Learning to forgive may be the most difficult of human acts,and the closest thing to divinity, whatever you decide that is.

Behind every great hatred is a love story.

The heart, once broken, stayed broken.

For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as wormword, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell

Mankind had built a world that would take hundred years to die. A century for the last lights to go out.

It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.

The sadness you feel is not your own. It's his sadness you feel in your heart, Amy, for missing you.

It's all well and good to save the human race. You could say I'm in favor. But you might want to pay a little more attention to what's right in front of you.

He breathed once more, holding the air in his chest, as if it were not air but something more--a sweet taste of freedom, of all cares lifted, everything over and done.

Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.

The sky was so thick with stars it was as if he could reach out and brush them with his hand.

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.