Stephen Graham Jones Quotes

I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Writer
• Figure
• Adjectives

Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn't thrown out of balance, and so there's no need for a 'rest of the story' to balance it back.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Balance
• Stupid
• Stories

The slasher film is such a neat, self-contained genre.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Genre
• Contained
• Slasher

If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Past
• Present
• Story

The whole 'starting with stories, ending with novels' thing, it's probably too ingrained in the industry and the psyche to change it.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Change
• Stories
• Novels

There's no purer feeling in the world than being scared.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Feeling
• Scared
• Pure

The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Control
• Humor
• Horror

If the main character's not in jeopardy - physical, psychological, emotional, whatever - then you don't have any tension, and you don't have a story.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Character
• Story
• Tension

Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Write
• Horror
• Prefer

For me, the facts in anything are always secondary. You don't lie convincingly with the truth. You lie convincingly with being a good liar.

Stephen Graham Jones

• Truth
• Facts
• Liar