R.K. King Quotes

It takes only one child to raze a village.

The nice thing about Southerners is the way we enjoy our neuroses.

The only [working] ritual is making tea. I use the loose leaves and drink it by the gallon.

Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one's oppressor.

because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.

Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me

And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?

But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

The idea for a novel is like a little tiny fire in a dark night. And, one by one, the characters come and stand around it and warm their hands.

There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth

The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.

Spinsterhood is Nature's Own Feminism.

And I believe happiness is the exact opposite of sadness, bitterness, and hatred: happiness should remain unexamined as long as possible.

I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Sometimes [...] real love is silent as well as blind.

It is strange. I see all the privileges and greatness of the future. It already looks grand, beautiful. Tell them I went lovingly, trustfully, peacefully.

Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody.

People respond faster to you on a text than an e-mail. Why is that? Why will they ignore an e-mail, but get back to a text?

I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.

A majority, perhaps as many as 75 percent, of abortion clinics are in areas with high minority populations.

I don't care what studio I'm in, I don't care what producers is producing it and I don't care what song it is because they taught me those things I feel so protected wherever I go as far as music.

Life too is precious to waste - to spend on anything but the best.

He had come to believe that life was a series of ironic ambushes. - Doctor Sleep

I love the gangster genre, but how many gangster movies are there? If I get a good gangster movie script, I'll do it.

A good reputation is something that must be earned, yet can never be bought.

A product can be quickly outdated, but a successful brand is timeless.

Reciting poetry isn't acting, it's memory work. Actor's are deceivers. People who pretend to be something else for a living aren't right in the head.

As the eldest in the family, I'm used to making unpopular decisions.

The devil's in most people. Not me, mind you, but most.

I'm not a big shopper. I'm very very picky about what it is that I buy, I prefer to buy vintage and then I prefer to be very selective.

We must move forward in the days ahead with audacious faith. The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Let us be practical and ask the question: How do we love our enemies?

All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one.

Justice means that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people.

If you can't laugh when things go bad--laugh and put on a little carnival--then you're either dead or wishing you were.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.

You have this resonant box that sounds cool when you smack it, so why not go for it?

Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent.

Music was my first love and companion.

If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

Writing's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Be nice to people whether you mean it or not. You never know when a kind word can make a difference in another person’s day – or maybe even his or her life.

Sooner or later everything you thought you'd left behind comes around again. For good or ill, it comes around again.