OWEN KING

I do try to entertain.

Everyday life is pretty funny and pretty ridiculous and occasionally really great, though not all the time, and that's all part of it.

I grew up watching Cinemax, the late-night Cinemax of the '80s and early '90s.

I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.

I like some of the B movies that are intentionally funny.

I think the model that I look at is someone like Jakob Dylan, whose dad is obviously every bit if not more famous than mine. He's a guy who sought to build a career on his own, doing something that's a little bit different than what his father does.

I'd love to be able to draw or play guitar or dance. All three at the same time - that's the talent for me.

The questions about my father are inevitable, regardless of the characters I create or the subject matter.

I only finish probably one out of every ten things I start. I give up all the time.

For me, the easiest thing to figure out is the story I want to tell, and the hardest thing is to figure out the voice that's gonna tell it. And that's why I finish very little.

It's hard for me to teach and write my own work at the same time.

A lot of storytelling... you're a bit hypnotized by it, and things just come out in certain ways, and you look at it and try to gather it.

Comic books and films have a lot more in common than, say, comics and books or films and books. The two art forms, to me, seem like pretty close siblings.

I suspect that perfect happiness is not possible for me. I suppose if I was ever selected for eternal life - the moment I was informed - that would bring me the closest.

One corollary of the wretchedness of the second trilogy of 'Star Wars' films has been the final, demented sanctification of the first trilogy of films.

Although it's depressing to admit this, more than a handful of post-'Donnie Brasco' Al Pacino roles would have been better served by Steve Buscemi.

I was pretty naive about how hard it would be to get out from under the family name. Not that I'm complaining.

I wasn't good at the sciences; I wasn't a good enough athlete. The only thing I could do was mow lawns. So I thought that writing or teaching was what I wanted to do.

I didn't want to write a book as Stephen King's son, because all I did was get born, and that's not much of an accomplishment. If that was the reason my book was published, it wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on. I wanted to do my own thing.

My personal history is strewn with massive errors in judgment. They're all precious to me.

Just because it's physically impossible for Steve Buscemi to be in every movie doesn't mean he's not capable of dramatically improving them all.

It's not easy for me as a writer to suspend my disbelief in a fantastical zone. I can do it. But it's more natural for me to write stories that are comic. Or hopefully comic.

I went to public schools in Bangor, Maine, and had as normal a childhood as you could imagine someone could, living in an enormous red house and being the son of a millionaire best-selling writer. I mean, I actually had a strangely normal childhood despite all that.

I think I always wanna write comedy because that's what feels truest to me; it feels closest to life as I know it, so that's what I want to reproduce.

Stephen King's 'Mr. Mercedes' is not a conventional horror novel. No ghosts, no vampires, no prune-faced escapees of the graveyard.