F. Paul Wilson Quotes & Sayings

True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it. — F. Paul Wilson

All men of honor are alone. — F. Paul Wilson

Reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed. — F. Paul Wilson

If all the diplomats were kicked out, the UN could be turned into the finest bordello in the world and do just as much, if not more, for international harmony. — F. Paul Wilson

I love seeing the light go on in aspiring writers' eyes when you point out ways to improve their prose or their story - when they get it. — F. Paul Wilson

This dazzling, unput-downable debut novel proves beyond a doubt that Dan Wells has the gift. His teenage protagonist is as chilling as he is endearing. More John Wayne Cleaver, please. — F. Paul Wilson

Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning. — F. Paul Wilson

Jesus paid for our sins, so let's get our money's worth. — F. Paul Wilson

The chief thing is desire. You've really got to want to do it, you've really got to want to tell that story. And you have to be able to set goals for yourself to get it done. — F. Paul Wilson

The acronym was derived from the title of the first book
a pamphlet, really
in which Khyfo was expounded, a supposedly scatalogical phase that meant 'Don't Touch' ...
The title was Keep Your Fucking Hands Off. Mean anything to you?
Not a thing.
Nor to me. But it supposedly summed up their philosophy pretty well at the time. — F. Paul Wilson

Writing is solitary, so I love going out once in a while and meeting my readers. I'll often hang with them after a signing for some beers. They're invariably bright! — F. Paul Wilson

No one you'd really like to see in public office has the bad taste to run. — F. Paul Wilson

There must be no bloodshed, no violence unless it is defensive, no coercion! We must do it our way and our way alone! To do otherwise is to betray centuries of hardship and struggle.
Above all else Kyfho. Forget Kyfho in your pursuit of victory over the enemy, and you will become the enemy ... worse than the enemy because he doesn't know he is capable of anything better. — F. Paul Wilson

Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off. — F. Paul Wilson

Money ... those who don't have enough of it are only aware of what it can buy them. When you finally have enough of it you become aware- acutely aware-of all the things it can't buy ... the really important things, like youth, health, love, peace of mind. — F. Paul Wilson

If I don't already know a song's chord progression, I'll stop writing and try to figure it out. I can occasionally listen to unstructured, amelodic ambient music, but I prefer no music. I don't need silence - I can write just about anywhere - but music is a major distraction. — F. Paul Wilson

Insides squirmed at the thought of one of those things being snaked up his penis and into his bladder. — F. Paul Wilson

Don't aim a gun if you have no intention of pulling the trigger. And if you do pull the trigger, shoot to kill. — F. Paul Wilson

I survived a number of garage bands during my teens and early twenties, both as drummer and guitarist. It's nigh impossible for me to listen to music without parsing it. — F. Paul Wilson

I don't know how it is with other writers, but most of the time when I finish [reading] a story or novel, I may be pleased, I may even be impressed, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'm thinking, I can do that. — F. Paul Wilson

My genre-hopping has caused problems with marketing and sales departments over the years, because they need to know where to position a book with the booksellers. — F. Paul Wilson

He isn't a government or an army. He's a guy. No matter what you think of any particular war, you've got to feel something for some poor guy ripped out of his life and handed a gun and sent somewhere to kill other guys who've been ripped out of their lives and sent to do the same thing, and while they're both shivering in their foxholes, scared they're not going to see another sunrise, all the fat cats, all the generals and politicos and priests and mullahs and tribal elders who started the whole damn thing, sit way to the rear, moving their chess pieces around." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he took a breath. "He got handed the dirty end of a dirty stick but he handled it. You've got to respect that. — F. Paul Wilson

The horror had begun. — F. Paul Wilson

I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books. — F. Paul Wilson

Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?
Kolabati looked into his eyes. He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent. — F. Paul Wilson

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character. — F. Paul Wilson

War, hate, jealousy, racism - what are they but manifestations of fear? — F. Paul Wilson

I have never written a book that I wouldn't want to read. The trouble is, I love to read horror, sf, fantasy, mysteries, hero pulps - romantic fiction, in the original, traditional meaning of that term, as opposed to mimetic fiction. But most of all, I love thrillers. — F. Paul Wilson

If you come to a fight thinking it will be a fair one, you didn't come prepared. — F. Paul Wilson