“Another of this wonderful woman’s wonderful sayings (I told you—I got a million of ‘em; don’t make me prove it) was “Milk always takes the flavor of what’s next to it in the icebox.” Not a very useful saying, you might think, but I suspect it’s not only the reason I’m writing this introduction, but the reason I’m writing it the way I’m writing it.
Does it sound like Harlan wrote it?
It does?
That’s because I just finished the admirable book which follows. For the last four days I have been, so to speak, sitting next to Harlan in the icebox. I am not copying his style; nothing as low as that. I have, rather, taken a brief impression of his style, the way that, when we were kids, we used to be able to take a brief impression of Beetle Bailey or Blondie from the Sunday funnies with a piece of Silly Putty (headline in the New York Times Book Review: KING OFFERS EERILY APT METAPHOR FOR HIS OWN MIND!!).”

— Stephen King, from his introduction to Harlan Ellison’s Stalking the Nightmare