Not since Charles Dickens has a writer had so many readers “by the throat,” observed a British review of this classic by Stephen King. Having sold more than 350 million books, King could be considered an expert at many things, perhaps chiefly at developing and maintaining a vivid imagination. The creative center of a writer’s life, he says, is reading. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” (147). He reads about 70 or 80 books per year — a mix of classics, pulp, popular, and literary works.
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York: 2000), p. 150.