A Quote by Richard Matheson

I think What Dreams May Come is the most important (read effective) book I've written. It has caused a number of readers to lose their fear of death the finest tribute any writer could receive. ... Somewhere In Time is my favorite novel.
As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders.
I think any comic book - or really, any book that you can read - in a sense is an educational tool in that it helps literacy. The more you read, the better you get at it. It almost doesn't matter what you read, the important thing is for young people to become readers.
For me, the goal is always to write a novel that I myself would like to read. People frequently ask me what my favorite book is, and in effect, there's always a capital-F Favorite, capital-B Book that I would like to write myself someday. I try to go for that ideal of writing the best, most entertaining, most beautifully written book that I possibly can.
I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.
Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time , What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death . ... I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.
'Orthodoxy' is the seminal book of ideas in my life. That book I've read more than any other book. It's the spinal column that leads up to my brain and informs the way I think. Flannery O'Connor is my favorite American writer.
Butler's novel 'Kindred' may be the book most widely read by readers outside science fiction; it has been assigned as a text in classrooms and has sold steadily since its publication in 1979.
Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules.... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.
It's a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a 'beat' writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don't see how it could be considered immoral.
I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!
A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.
Young people are going to go to someone, somewhere. And we had better see that that 'someone' is us when the opportunity is ours, for there will come a time when we will wish they would come, and do we know but that the interruption we now impatiently put off may be the most important thing we could be doing at this particular time?
I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness.
I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.
If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, Maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. ... But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
I had written a book called "Boston Boy" some years ago, and that took me from the time I could speak, I guess, in Boston through the time when I finally left to come to New York. That book had a number of sort of rites of passage for me.
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