Here’s Paul Sheldon under serious duress:
He had heard the same thing time and time again. It came in different wrappers, but it always boiled down to the same thing: I remember getting into the car, and I remember waking up here. Everything else is a blank.
Why couldn’t that happen to him?
Because writers remember everything, Paul. Especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels, not amnesia. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is that ability to remember the story of every scar.
Art consists of the persistence of memory.
Who had said that? Thomas Szasz? William Faulkner? Cyndi Lauper?
-Paul Sheldon, Misery, Stephen King
The Deranged Librarian 