The Last Word: Stephen King on Trump, Writing, Why Selfies Are Evil

You’ve been married to your wife, Tabitha, for 45 years. What have you learned about relationships?
That the best thing you can do sometimes is to shut your mouth and let the other person do what they need to do. It takes a lot of acceptance to make a marriage work, and you have to keep talking. And you have to like the other person, too. That helps an awful lot.

How do you avoid distractions when you write?
It’s pure habit. I write from probably 7:30 till noon most days. I kind of fall into a trance. It’s important to remember that it isn’t the big thing in life. The big thing in life is being there if you’re needed for family or if there’s an emergency or something. But you have to cut out the unimportant background chatter. That means no Twitter. That means not going to Huffington Post to see what Kim Kardashian is up to. There’s a time for that – for me, it’s usually before I go to bed. I find myself sitting hypnotized and looking at videos of funny dogs, that kind of thing.

Tell me the most Maine thing about you.
I’m basically just a country man. I have a four-wheel-drive truck. You need it in the winter because a lot of the roads are crap.