Novel idea

Yes, the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. My wife and I went up there in October. It was their last weekend of the season, so the hotel was almost empty. They asked me if I could pay cash because they were taking their credit card receipts back down to Denver. I went past the first sign that said, Roads may be closed after November 1, and I said, Jeez, there's a story up here.

—Stephen King on writing The Shining (Paris Review No. 189)

When I placed my head on the pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think...I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with some uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous Creator of the world.

—Mary Shelley, on her dream that inspired her novel, Frankenstein (preface, Frankenstein)

One night, I was lying in bed and I was channel surfing between reality TV programs and actual war coverage. On one channel, there's a group of young people competing for I don't even know; and on the next, there's a group of young people fighting in an actual war. I was really tired, and the lines began to blur in an unsettling way. That's the moment when Katniss's story came to me.

—Suzanne Collins, on writing The Hunger Games (School Library Journal)

In 1964 I'd read a story about a man catching a 4,550 pound shark off Long Island and thought,

'what if a shark that size showed up and wouldn't go away?'

—Peter Benchley, on writing Jaws (interview, Ft. Meyers Magazine)