Quotes from John Searles

I usually don't write at night, but there are times where I wake up at 3 in the morning and write all night.

At the age of 70-something, Helen Gurley Brown was still a woman who knew how to get men to look at her.

When I first came to New York, I would scream like a girl and run to the other side of the street if there was a pigeon. Now I can face off with a pigeon.

I think I'm more sympathetic to writers, to the work and the struggle and the craft of it, than when I was in graduate school at NYU and was very judgmental.

I always joke deep down I'm really a teenage girl on the inside.

Buying an apartment in New York was beyond my wildest dreams. I had to scrape together every cent to buy it. And I'm so happy I did.

I don't write to a genre.

Everyone has a ghost story, or at least that's how it has always seemed to me.

Gone are the days when a publisher could take out an ad, count on a few reviews, and have an author do a couple of signings. Nowadays, readers want to feel a connection with an author.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

There are times when it's easier to fool yourself than swallow some jagged piece of reality.

What I will say is this: each of us is born into this life with a light inside of us. Some, like yours, burn brighter than others. You don't see that yet, but I do. What's most important is to never let that light go out, because when you do, it means you've lost yourself to the darkness. It means you've lost your hope. And hope is what makes this world a beautiful place. Do you understand what I am trying to say?

Most people, they are afraid to believe in ghosts. Me, i'm afraid not to believe. Because, well, what then? If there really is nothing else- nowhere to go after this, no way to linger on this plane to finish unsettled business it we must, then that means each moment, each breath, each passing second, is as ethereal as the wind. It means all we do here on earth- the going and coming, the loving and hating- it is all for naught. So, no. Ghosts don't scare me. But no ghosts- that terrifies me.

Each of us is born into this life with a light inside us... What's most important is to never let that light go out, because when you do, it means you've lost yourself to darkness. It means you've lost hope. And hope is what makes this world a beautiful place.

Just because people are related doesn't always make the difference it should.

You know what can make a person possessed, Sylvie? It's not Satan or Lucifer or any of that nonsense. Do you know what it is? . . . Love and hate. Greed. Revenge. Pride. Those things...

I learned to love the little things about him, because of all the big things I could not love. No one could. It would be wrong to.

Each of us is born into this life with a light inside of us. Some, like yours, burn brighter than others. You don't see that yet, but I do. What's most important is to never let that light go out, because when you do, it means you've lost yourself to the darkness. It means you've lost yourself to hope. And hope is what makes this world a beautiful place.

Why do the same people who believe in those deities doubt the existence of darker spirits? I ask all of you, how can a person believe in the light but not the dark?

That's what belief does, Sylvie. Whether something is true or not is beside the point.

It seems like a good way to grow up," I told her. "It was. But raising a child holds no guarantees. You can follow all the right steps, do all the right things, and still something can go wrong— Actually, no. That's a word my husband would use. I won't say wrong anymore, I'll say differently than planned. That's what happened to my daughter when she reached her teens.

I think about those words a lot, and I think about their spirits too. If you believe in those sorts of things. I do and I don't believe. But mostly— mostly, mostly— I do.

each of us is born into this life with a light inside of us. Some, like yours, burn brighter than others. You don't see that yet, but I do. What's most important is to never let that light go out, because when you do, it means you've lost yourself to the darkness. It means you've lost your hope. And hope is what makes this world a beautiful place.

Darkness cannot put out the light. It can only make God brighter.